
Class S R t ^ 5 

Book > OZ 



G3pyright}l°. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSTR 



The Masculine in 
Religion 



By 

Carl Delos Case, Ph. D. 

Pastor of the Hanson Place Baptist Church 
BrooUjin, N, Y. 






J 3 



PHILADELPHIA 

Bmertcan :©aptt0t Ipublicatton Society 
1630 Chestnut Street 



LI k*. 



^^» 

c^ 



^s 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two CoDJes Received 

JUN 23 1906 

„^ eotyrlgtit Entry ^ 

class/ CC XXc. No. 
^^ CO»»Y B. 



Copyright 1906 by the 
American Baptist Publication Society 



Published June, 1906 



• - • 



jfrom tbe Society '6 own ptCM 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

1. THE PROBLEM STATED 5 

II. THE Feminine Note in Modern Society . 12 

III. Evidences of a Feminine Christianity . . 22 

IV. THE Mental Sexual Differences 33 

V. THE modern versus THE BIBLICAL RELIGIOUS 

TYPE 46 

VI. Some Presuppositions of Sex in Religion 61 

VII. Men and the Church 77 

VIII. Men and the Lodge 89 

IX. Men and business 100 

X. The Manliness of Christ no 

iii 



THE 

Masculine in Religion 



CHAPTER I 
THE PROBLEM STATED 

THE subject of sex in education and religion 
must assume increasing importance as the 
fundamental differences between the sexes are 
more clearly recognized. Sex is not a physiolog- 
ical condition only ; but as the brain is in the closest 
physiological sympathy with all the organs of the 
body, all mental activity corresponds to bodily func- 
tion. Spencer, with his usual evolutionary phrase- 
ology, states that ** just as certainly as they (women) 
have physical differences which are related to the 
respective parts they play in the maintenance of the 
race, so certainly have they psychical differences, 
similarly related to their respective shares in the 
rearing and protection of offspring." Sex reaches 
up through physical to mental and spiritual charac- 
teristics which essentially differentiate the mascu- 
line from the feminine. 

It is almost an impossible task to name the 

5 



6 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

eternally masculine and feminine elements of the 
psychical life. The investigation neither of the past 
nor the present of woman's status will enable us 
to determine accurately the future relative position 
of man and woman. Perhaps the variation between 
the masculine and the feminine has been far more 
pronounced under the past conditions of civilization 
than it will be under the future. The best that can 
be done is to note the trend of intellectual and 
spiritual life, and foresee, though but dimly, the 
goal by means of what has already passed into his- 
tory. It is not a mere poetic fancy that made 
Tennyson say : 

For woman is not undevelopt man, 

But diverse. . . 

Yet in the long years liker must they grow ; 

The man be more of woman, she of man ; 

He gain in sweetness and in moral height, 

Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world ; 

She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care, 

Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind ; 

Till at the last she set herself to man, 

Like perfect music unto noble words. 

Many modern writers would scarcely accept the 
first line of this quotation, for to them woman is 
the past and the future of the race : the past, be- 
cause she is near to the child who itself repeats the 
childhood of the race ; the future, because we are 
to attain again to the childlike simplicity and equi- 
librium of life. That there is danger of obliterating 



THE PROBLEM STATED ^ 

many of the mental sexual differences is also appar- 
ent. Culture may repudiate nature, against which 
nature herself may eventually rebel. 

In the early history of the race, the man and the 
woman were more alike : physically, since she per- 
formed many of what to-day would be called the 
man's duties ; mentally, since whatever education 
might be given arose from the home or village or 
tribal association, and the thinking of the man was 
the thinking of the woman. But as civilization 
progressed, there came a marked divergence be- 
tween the sexes. Woman became more and more 
the laborer of the kitchen or the entertainer of the 
parlor, and farther and farther withdrawn from the 
hardening contact with the world. At the present 
there is a partial return to primitive conditions. The 
calisthenic exercises of the schools, the athletic 
pursuits of the more leisurely classes, the better 
knowledge of hygiene, have produced a more hardy 
physique ; while the entrance of women into many 
trades and professions, and the coeducation of most 
schools and colleges have produced more of mental 
equality. In this new phase upon which we are 
entering, the present aim of educators is to obvi- 
ate any possible minimizing of real mental sexual 
differences. 

Any student who grants the existence of es- 
sential mental differences between the man and 
woman, although he may not be able accurately 
to define them, will acknowledge that education 



8 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

shpuld closely correspond to these native distinc- 
tions. It is perhaps an open question whether 
women should receive the same collegiate train- 
ing as men, although this is practically given now 
except so far as vocation may determine special 
courses. President Eliot, of Harvard, however, has 
declared that there must be a real, essential, wise 
difference in the education of the two sexes, al- 
though no one has exactly discovered what that 
difference should be ; and with him others agree. 
In England, either because educational theory is in 
advance of America, or behind her, the idea is 
more prevailing that the woman's education should 
be different, and that too, on the ground that 
she is mentally inferior to man. Prof. Thomas 
Case, professor of moral philosophy and metaphys- 
ics at Oxford, believes that there are intellectual 
differences between the sexes that make it difficult 
for a woman to find a place in a virile university. 
The sytem of education, he maintains, should not 
be the same both in a woman's and in a man's 
university. 

Turning to religion, it is manifest that if the ex- 
pression and training of the mental life of the woman 
should be different from that of a man, then the 
expression and training of her spiritual life should 
also be different. In Genesis i : 27, which reads : 
*' And God created man in his own image, in the 
image of God created he him, male and female 
created he them,'' there is at least an intimation 



THE PROBLEM STATED Q 

that for an adequate manifestation of God among 
finite human beings, there must be both male and 
female. 

** Religion," Menzies says in his '* History of Re- 
ligion,'' **is the worship of unseen powers from a 
sense of need/' Two elements of a religious life 
are here included, belief and worship. To these 
must be added that conduct which corresponds to 
the idea of God contained in belief, and that atti- 
tude toward God assumed in worship. There are 
thus three phases in which the religious life dis- 
plays itself : belief, worship, conduct. Theoretic- 
ally, the beliefs of all individuals should be iden- 
tical, as there is only one truth of which belief is 
the statement. Practically, belief is modified by 
one's angle of vision, and one's angle of vision de- 
pends upon the two factors of environment — the 
truth presented and the medium of communication 
and of nature — one's heredity and acquired mental 
equipment. Beliefs, even though seemingly con- 
tradictory, are not always absolutely mutually ex- 
clusive. Worship also varies with belief, tempera- 
ment, custom. Worship now seeks an elaborate 
ritual, now a puritanical plainness in an unesthetic 
building; now bowings of head and knees, now 
altars and gowns and tapers ; but it is all worship. 

Conduct does not seem so variable as belief. 
Yet even here Paul declares that one man can eat 
meat but another must refrain, and yet both act on 
religious principle. Conscience as a judge is not 



10 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

infallible. It can only judge by the light of the 
facts and of the law presented to it. Of right 
actions also, there is a choice of that which shall 
best satisfy the individual conscience, whether at 
any moment to give service to others, and what 
particular service, or to attend to the true interests 
of self. 

It is evident that no standard of authority can be 
presented to an individual which must inevitably 
be followed in the expression of his religious spirit. 
Two most interesting recognitions of this fact 
can be cited. First, is the statement of Pres. 
Charles Cuthbert Hall, whose lectures in India 
and special studies in the East fit him to speak 
authoritatively : 

'* We must realize that an indigenous Christian- 
ity has appeared in the East. These nations have 
advanced to the plane of independent religious de- 
velopment and claim freedom of action for them- 
selves. The East is on the point of working out 
its own Christian character. . . We must be con- 
tent with an Oriental type of Christianity which 
should be allowed its free development in the liberty 
that we have claimed for ourselves.*' 

Second, is the theory accepted by all modern 
Bible teachers, that the juvenile type of the Chris- 
tian life must differ from the adult type, not in 
being an incomplete and imperfect phase of what 
it is later to be, but in being the natural expression 
of a child's mind toward God and man. In the 



THE PROBLEM STATED II 

child of from eight to twelve and thirteen, the ac- 
quisitive feeling, the clannish spirit especially mani- 
fest among boys, the feeling of justice on the egois- 
tic side, and other characteristics, determine the 
religious life of the boy and girl. Equally is the 
adolescent age a period of specific investigation. 

Now, if it is clearly understood that there is an 
Oriental and an Occidental type of religious life, 
and as clearly understood that there is a juvenile 
type and an adolescent type differing from the adult, 
why should it not be equally granted that there is 
a distinctive masculine and a distinctive feminine 
type of religious life ? Is there not far more differ- 
ence between the man's and the woman's religion 
than between the man's and the boy's ? Is it not 
time to study the comparative psychology of relig- 
ion, comparing not simply the child with the adult 
and the Japanese with the American, but the man 
with the woman ? 



CHAPTER II 
THE FEMININE NOTE IN MODERN SOCIETY 

THAT woman has a new place in modern civil- 
ization no one will deny. As to whether she 

has changed the complexion of modern life, 
and if so in what respects and how much, is en- 
tirely a different matter. The coming of a new 
partner into an established business may or may 
not change the character of the business. Never- 
theless, the former is an indication of the latter. 
Unless the woman has had a larger opportunity to 
affect modern life, she cannot in fact have accom- 
plished it. It needs but a casual observer of modern 
conditions to notice that the woman has taken her 
place beside man in almost all of his vocations. 
Some one, in giving a description of woman, has 
said that she is man's inferior physically, his equal 
intellectually, and his superior spiritually. As in- 
tellectually equal, even though not of the same 
quality in intellect, she has taken and filled many 
of the so-called masculine occupations. 

From 1870 to igoo there was this increase in the 
number of women employed in the United States 
in the various professions and trades : Artists, from 
412 to 11,021; authors, 159 to 5,940; clergymen, 

12 



THE FEMININE NOTE IN MODERN SOCIETY 1 3 

67 to 3,373; journalists, 35 to 2,193; musicians, 
5>753 ^0 52,359; physicians, 527 107,387; teach- 
ers, 84,047 to 327,614; bookkeepers, stenographers, 
etc., 8,028 to 245,517. Other figures are in pro- 
portion. The most apparent increase is to be found 
among the wage-earners, where no special course 
of training is demanded. It has been estimated 
that there is a total population of women over ten 
years of age in the United States of over 28,000,000, 
and that of these more than 5,000,000, or one-fifth, 
are working for a living ; also, that there are about 
i4,ooo,ocx) women between the ages of fourteen 
and thirty-five, and that of these over thirty per 
cent, are wage-earners. The cause need not now 
be discussed. The facts and their influences are 
the only subjects of consideration. 

In educational fields of activity the question 
which might be propounded is, not whether the 
women's college shall exist, but whether eventu- 
ally some of the men's colleges shall not become 
women's colleges in order to keep up their requisite 
number of students. In general education, in the 
culture-training, women already seem to have a 
fair start of men. With the club life among women, 
and the general discussion of topics of art, literature, 
and science, it does seem a natural conclusion that 
the time has come, or will come, when many men 
will cease being intelligent companions for women. 

Women's education is comparatively new, new 
at least in the higher grades of learning. In 1820 



14 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

Gov. De Witt Clinton said at the opening of Miss 
Emma Willard's Seminary for Ladies at Water- 
ford, New York : **As this is the only attempt ever 
made in the country to promote the education of 
the female sex by the patronage of the government, 
as our first and best affections are derived from 
maternal affections, and as the education of the 
female character is inseparably connected with hap- 
piness and respectability abroad, I trust that you 
will not be deterred by commonplace ridicule from 
extending your munificence to this meritorous insti- 
tution." How would a similar statement sound to- 
day, with the women's colleges (not ** female " as 
Governor Clinton said) East and West, with almost 
all of our colleges open to women, with many of 
the coeducational institutions attended by more 
women than men, with England and Germany 
coming into line with modern demand.? 

In the professions the presence of women is not 
so apparent, but nevertheless manifest. There are 
now many women doctors. Even in London there 
is a school of medicine for women which enjoys the 
unique privilege of having been opened by the 
present queen of England, on which occasion she 
was made to say by her spokesman, her husband, 
that she thought that no one could be so illiberal as 
not to wish to give women medical education. 
Hospitals have been founded by women in New 
York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, 
Minneapolis, and elsewhere. 



THE FEMININE NOTE IN MODERN SOCIETY 1 5 

In law there is a constant increase of women 
practitioners. They go little into the court-rooms, 
but engage in office practice. Sometimes the way 
has been opened for a woman, the wife of some 
lawyer, who on account of the ill-health of her 
husband has been compelled to assume many of 
the duties of her husband's practice. But to-day 
young ladies look toward the law as an inviting field 
of activity. The first woman of modern times that 
asked for and obtained admission to the bar was 
Arabella A. Mansfield, of Mount Pleasant, Iowa, 
who was admitted in 1869 under a statute provid- 
ing for the admission of *' male white citizens. '^ 
The committee recommending her said that they 
felt justified in recommending to the court that con- 
struction of the law which they deemed authorized 
not only by the language of the law but by the 
demands and necessities of the present time and 
occasion, thus recognizing that new times demand 
new interpretations of the ancient laws. Emma 
Barkaloo, of Brooklyn, N. Y., was the second 
woman to be enrolled as an attorney. Since then 
the number has constantly increased. It is true that 
not all who study law intend to become lawyers. 
Some study for the general knowledge of business 
and professional life that it gives them ; some, to 
keep in touch with that which interests their men 
companions ; some, that they may know more 
about the laws which they are compelled to obey, 
even though they do not make them, thus render- 



l6 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

ing them the equal of the legislators and lawyers 
with whom, as property owners, they have to do. 

In journalism women have taken many important 
positions, even showing their capacity to edit large 
daily papers. As leaders in great public movements 
many familiar names might be given. Even in 
Germany Miss Frances Willard said that she saw 
a woman preside over a meeting of three thousand 
men, and that she evidently perfectly understood 
her duties as chairman, and handled the somewhat 
turbulent audience with rare tact and generalship. 
In the ministry the statistics show that an increas- 
ing number of women take up the duties of pastor 
and preacher. Here the prejudice against her seems 
to remain more definitely fixed, perhaps because 
the church is generally more conservative than 
other social organizations, but even here the pros- 
pects point to a larger field for the ambitious woman. 

This increasing importance of the position of 
woman in industrial and professional fields has 
without doubt created many new conditions in 
civilization and wrought for her a changed rela- 
tionship in the social complexity. First, then, can 
be seen her industrial and financial freedom, which 
is the emancipation of what has often been the 
white slave. The Indians of America, before Chris- 
tianization, made their wives do the work. The 
Fiji Island princes were accustomed to lay the four 
corners of their residences upon four women buried 
alive. In the East Indies there was a custom of 



THE FEMININE NOTE IN MODERN SOCIETY 17 

burning wives on funeral pyres with their husbands 
until the English law forbade it. To be sure, we 
must look deeper for the cause of the emancipation 
of woman, and this cause is the spirit of Christianity. 
It needs only to be noted now that the woman who 
can both earn and spend her money can look her 
would-be provider independently in the face, and 
this gives her freedom in financial as well as in 
other ways. 

But a more serious change effected by the eleva- 
tion of women has been the increased independence 
of women from the demands of home life. It needs 
the best-developed and best-educated women to be 
wives and mothers, but education seems to debar 
many from assuming these responsibilities. Edu- 
cation does not unfit a woman for matrimony. It 
does not necessarily, seldom does in point of fact, 
make her desire to carry around her degrees as a 
satisfaction to pride ; but it does keep many from 
marriage because with their education they find 
fields of activity open to them and, perhaps, also 
have their ideal of a companion so high that they are 
with difficulty satisfied. After all, let us be per- 
suaded that the increased education of women, while 
it may have prevented some marriages of sentiment, 
has raised the standard of home life, made a better- 
trained rising generation, made more mother and 
wife out of the woman and less of a machine. 
There is less dependence but more companionship, 

less of slavery but more of equality ; not less of the 
B 



l8 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

housewife who believes that it is well worth while 
to know how to cook and take care of children, but 
more of the leader in all that makes home life 
beautiful. 

As for the legal position of women, great changes 
have occurred, and these changes have also reacted 
upon other helpless classes of society. Susan B. 
Anthony says that fifty years ago it was not the 
fashion to give the girls any particular education, 
and as for her working, it was unheard of. She 
must stay at home and attend strictly to her house- 
work and knitting. So, as she had neither money 
nor education, there was no reason why she should 
have a chance to vote. At that time, says Miss 
Anthony, married women had not the slightest 
legal status so far as property was concerned. To- 
day in most, if not all the States of the Union, mar- 
ried women hold their own property, make con- 
tracts, draw up wills, and have most of the property 
rights their husbands possess. 

Still other phases of the new woman's position 
can be mentioned, but those already named are 
sufficient to show that woman has taken a new 
position in the social status. She has accomplished 
more and been granted more than ever before in the 
history of the race. Does it follow that the social 
atmosphere has also changed? The emancipation 
of the Negro of the South primarily affected the 
Negro himself, giving him political and industrial 
freedom and, to a greater or less extent, opening 



THE FEMININE NOTE IN MODERN SOCIETY IQ 

up the trades and professions to him. Can any 
one say that, as a result of this emancipation, the 
white South has not also changed ? in fact, the 
entire nation? The social gap may be to-day as 
deep as ever or deeper, but there is a new Southern 
note which differs from the ante-bellum voice and 
differs to a great extent because there is a free 
black South. Is it not to be expected that when 
one-half of the human race in civilized lands have 
reached a new status, that this half, the feminine, 
shall have given a feminine touch to all subjects, a 
feminine hue to all fields of endeavor, and have 
given us, even though we are more or less unaware 
of it, a feminine art, literature, education, and 
religion? 

Can we detect this note in education, for exam- 
ple? The feminine influence may be subtle and 
still be apparent. A single quotation will suffice, 
and especially that it is particularly luminous. It 
is from Susan E. Blow as she writes on ** The Sur- 
prises of Experience*' in the ** Kindergarten Re- 
view'' of March, 1902. After noting the changes 
in the tone of literature since many women have 
become writers and a majority of women readers, 
changes in which obscenity has been eliminated 
and harshness diminished, and in which, however, 
literature is being deprived of its virility and, to a 
certain extent, of its integrity, and is prone to sub- 
stitute a sentimental idea of what ought to be for a 
candid recognition of what is, she says: 



20 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

A similar influence is traceable in education and particularly 
in the kindergarten. It has produced the perennial smiler, 
from whose smile, critics aver, the child flees in terror. It has 
produced indirect and sentimental forms of address and appeal. 
It condemns all stories which recognize in little children the 
possibility of wrong-doing. It has an inordinate desire to call 
everything by a fictitious name. It does not want children to 
look at Froebel's shadow-pictures. It is afraid of soldier 
games. It dreams that life is beauty and does not know that 
life is war. It claims that the blind preferences of the un- 
formed child shall determine his education, and caricatures 
Froebel's most important dictum by following with unintel- 
ligent passivity wherever he may lead Hence it delivers its 
victims to the school with enfeebled will, arrested intellect, 
and greatly increased caprice and waywardness. 

But what can v^e say of religion? Is the femi- 
nine note to be discovered here.? Woman has 
gained, without doubt, a new importance in this 
phase of life. Certain offices in the church are still 
held by the male sex, but the churches of to-day 
would be shorn of their power should the women 
fail in their devotion. Higher education is not even 
yet widespread among women, and in fact there 
are no statistics to show what has been the result 
of education upon woman's faith. Yet it appears 
to be true that a growing knowledge of scientific 
conclusions produces the same results upon a wom- 
an's faith as upon a man's. To the mind of that 
man who has changed opinion to assured belief, 
who has thought his way out through his problems 
to sanity of faith, there will be no regret for the 
stronger faith which results to the woman through 



THE FEMININE NOTE IN MODERN SOCIETY 21 

study. Woman responds as does man to the 
changed tendencies in scientific and critical studies 
and to the new movement of social and intellectual 
emancipation. 

Nevertheless, woman is still feminine, and the 
grave question must be asked, Has she made Chris- 
tianity and the Christian life distinctively feminine? 
Is there a feminine note in religion as in education, 
depriving it of virility, prone to substitute a senti- 
mental idea of what ought to be for a candid recog- 
nition of what is? with an inordinate desire to call 
everything by a fictitious name, dreaming that life is 
beauty, not knowing that life is war, enfeebling the 
will, arresting the intellect, and greatly increasing 
caprice and waywardness? 



CHAPTER III 
EVIDENCES OF A FEMININE CHRISTIANITY 

ON the first inquiry, the most clear recognition 
of the changed condition of the Christian 
ideal is seen in the absence of men from 
the churches. The question has been fully dis- 
cussed in newspapers and brochures and it is not 
necessary to repeat the various arguments here. 
The absence, however, should be noted to show 
that a man has either an environment which makes 
it more difficult for him to come to church, or a 
nature which cannot find complete satisfaction in 
the modern presentation of Christianity, presum- 
ably both. This fact of male absence from the 
church has been recently denied, but the state- 
ments are misleading. It is true that in certain 
churches there are as many men as women and 
often more, but that is not true of all churches. 
The statement is only another proof of the lack oif 
a virile ministry in most pulpits with its prominence 
in a few. It is also true that there is an increasing 
number of male students in the colleges who are 
Christians, an enlistment of 30,000 students in 
Bible study, and a stronger Christian tone in ath- 
letics. This again is due to the initiative of the 
22 



EVIDENCES OF A FEMININE CHRISTIANITY 23 

Y. M. C. A. movement, which is a plea for a 
muscular and a masculine Christian life. 

There are about 20,000,000 Protestant church- 
members to-day in the United States. About 13,- 
000,000 of these are women. Seventy-five per 
cent, of the boys leave Sunday-school during the 
adolescent age. Mr. C. C. Michener, in connec- 
tion with the Association, reports that, in the coun- 
try, one in two young men go to church regularly, 
one in three occasionally, and one in fourteen not 
at all; in the city, one in four regularly, one in two 
occasionally, and one in seven not at all. This is 
one of the most encouraging reports given to the 
public. In a recent year, the minutes of a prominent 
denomination in Massachusetts gave the totals of 
male membership in 198 churches. These churches 
had 33,885 members, or an average of 170 to each 
church. The total male membership was 10,543, 
or an average of a little over fifty-three to each 
church. This makes it plain that of these churches 
only about one-third were men. These figures 
were gathered largely from the rural districts where 
there are generally more male members in propor- 
tion to the entire membership, hi regard to the 
Catholics, the reports are much the same. The 
*' Catholic Telegraph '' once said that at the same 
communion rail there are everywhere ten young 
women for one young man. 

The cause of this condition should be discovered 
and, if possible, remedied. There is one place to 



24 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

study the subject at first-hand, and that is in the 
Sunday-school. Here the transition from devotion 
to disaffection can be noted. The boys of the 
kindergarten, primary, and junior departments, are 
present. During the intermediate period the process 
of disaffection occurs. Can it be suggested that a 
main cause is the failure to substitute the masculine 
for the juvenile type of instruction and discipline.? 
The juvenile type has many points of similarity to 
the feminine and the transition is easy from one to 
the other, but the growing boy finds his needs 
unsatisfied and his new life only hampered by a 
wrong mold. 

But leaving statistics and descriptions, there are 
other more manifest testimonies to the presence of 
the feminine ideal. First, there is the plea heard 
here and there, sometimes indefinitely and with 
wavering terminology, and sometimes with clear 
understanding of the need, for a masculine type 
of religious life. As a specimen of a clear appeal 
can be quoted these words from Pres. Benjamin Ide 
Wheeler: '* The real cause of manless churches lies 
in the fact that the church has been for ages culti- 
vating the female side of religion. As the form of 
woman is marked by grace and beauty and flowing 
outlines, and the form of man by ruggedness and 
strength, so all those thoughts or conceptions or at- 
tributes of the spirit which conform to beauty may 
be called female, and those which are akin to 
strength male.'' 



EVIDENCES OF A FEMININE CHRISTIANITY 25 

A still more striking appeal was made by Captain 
Mahan in a recent address to the cadets at West 
Point on the presentation by the American Tract 
Society of Teachers' Bibles to the members of the 
graduating class. He was quoted as saying : 

*' The masculine, military side of religion as por- 
trayed in the Bible is too often overlooked, because 
women are more religious than men. In its pre- 
cepts and typical men Christianity finds in the 
military calling its most vivid illustration and fer- 
vent appeals. Christ came not to send peace, but 
a sword. The good men of the Bible are a line of 
heroes, courageous in action, patient in endurance, 
obedient, subordinate, counting gain but loss so 
that the ends of God their general, of Christ their 
captain, be achieved. They loved not their lives 
unto death, . . The essential character of the good 
Christian and the good soldier have much in com- 
mon. They are more closely allied than those of 
any other calling. War realizes in an extreme form 
the conflict of all life, and even in peace the de- 
cisive military virtues are essentially Christian vir- 
tues. Suffer, then, no man to despise in your per- 
son the one profession or the other." 

Another evidence of the presence of the feminine 
note in religion is seen in the regret on the part of 
many writers of the domination of the religious life 
in the Middle Ages by men. It is true that man 
has been the prophet, priest, and king, the preacher 
and deacon, the theologian and ecclesiastic. In the 



26 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

ancient temple, the court of women occupied the 
eastern part of the temple enclosure, but was not, 
as might be supposed to-day, for the exclusive use 
of women. Women had not an exclusive use of 
any part of the sacred enclosure. But nearer to 
the sacred rites and ceremonies of the temple, en- 
closing the holy place was the court of Israel, into 
which the women could not go. From their en- 
closure they could view from a greater distance the 
fire of sacrifice and the smoke of incense. At 
Macon, France, where to-day is a school for the 
higher education of girls opened some fifteen years 
ago, a council once met to decide whether women 
had souls. 

In view of these facts, Bishop Lawrence, of Mas- 
sachusetts, recently averred that the whole realm 
of theology has, until the present generation, been 
interpreted to us by men. Who knows what a dif- 
ferent theology we might have had in the past if 
women's minds had been at work on the problem ? 
Would Mariolatry have taken the form it did ? 
Would Calvinism have captured the intellect of 
Protestantism .? Would any man have dared to 
say that hell was paved with souls of infants ? 

A more extended discussion of this subject occurs 
in a book of J. Brierly, B. A., on ** Ourselves and 
the Universe,'' in which occurs a short chapter on 
'* Sex in Religion." While he emphasizes the need 
of an inquiry into the difference between the sexes 
as a cause of variation in institutions, theologies, 



EVIDENCES OF A FEMININE CHRISTIANITY 2^ 

and varied activities, yet he feels that the history 
of Christianity has lacked the touch of a woman's 
nature. 

The male ecclesiastic, imagining religion to be an affair 
of dry intellect, a formula to be ground out of his logic- 
mill, succeeded in making it anti-human. . . The mother 
side of humanity would never have constructed the fire of 
medievalism. . . Nothing has been made clearer than that 
the attempt to build religion out of elements purely masculine 
is a blunder for which the outraged nature of things will 
always take a full revenge. 

One doubts whether the Middle Ages were en- 
tirely so masculine as these writers report. When 
man repudiates dogma to-day more than woman, it 
is scarcely consistent to make the domination of 
man the source of it in the past centuries, unless a 
distinction is made in the kind of dogma. It is too 
much to assume that logic and reason are matters 
purely masculine. It is also too much to take it for 
granted that the woman's heart always displays the 
mother's love in association with others. Some of 
the severest hatreds and bitterest jealousies have 
been woman's. On the other side, there can be 
seen feminine elements in the past within the her- 
mit life, the monastery system, and various forms 
of worship. Nevertheless, it may be granted that 
the type of Christianity which could produce the 
crusades, was distinctively masculine. 

Perhaps it would be far better to recognize the 
variableness even in femininity and masculinity. 



28 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

In the male there is and should be secondary fem- 
inine traits ; and in the female secondary masculine 
traits. There is such a thing as too much mascu- 
linity for men, and too much femininity for women. 
What these writers protest against is the too great 
masculinity of the Middle Ages, while now we 
should equally protest against the too great fem- 
ininity of the present age as far as religion is con- 
cerned. We want to retain all that is good of the 
past. The ** reserve'' of the individual and the 
nation as in business, marks the progress. Much 
done in each century of history is but scaffolding 
as it is in the day's work of the individual. The 
individual must take with him from childhood all 
that ^'reserve" which childhood has accumulated 
for him. He can say that now that he is a man, 
he has put away childish things ; but he must still 
know that of the childlike disposition it was said : 
*' Of such is the kingdom of heaven." The race 
too must conserve its past. The pendulum must 
not swing too far. hi casting off the narrow and 
constraining masculine elements, the Christian life 
must not become all feminine. The masculine it- 
self must be progressive. The same proportion of 
masculine qualities cannot satisfy our standards to- 
day as it did yesterday. The increasing mastery 
of the manliness of Christ will push up our ideal of 
manhood as the centuries roll on. 

Thank God for the feminine. Look and see 
how here and there the departure of selfishness, 



EVIDENCES OF A FEMININE CHRISTIANITY 29 

the growth of courtesies, the prevalence of love, 
the emphasis on the delicate, the practical use of 
knowledge to the betterment of life, the exaltation 
of home both in itself and its relationship to society, 
there can be seen the touch of women, which like 
the touch of a woman's hand on a sick man's pillow, 
reveals the delicacy of woman's nature. Let the 
feminine exist primarily in woman and secondarily 
in man ; and let the masculine continue primarily 
in man and secondarily in woman. 

But the third and most important evidence of the 
over-emphasis of the feminine type of Christianity 
is the clear appeal for the feminine ideal. Mr. 
Brierly, for example, in the chapter before referred 
to, says: '*It is the woman's nature, more in- 
timately than man's, that expresses the innermost 
soul of religion," and here he pleads that it is in a 
region beyond reason, in the sphere of intuition, of 
feeling, of aspiration, that religion finds its peren- 
nial spring. '* It is because along that side of its 
nature humanity most quickly and most surely feels 
the quiver of the infinite that woman must inevit- 
ably in the future be recognized as arch-priestess of 
religion." Religion is not, then, equally for all, 
and one part of humanity finds it especially easy to 
be religious, and the other part has by nature no 
primary claim on the religious life. Man reaches 
the religious life chiefly by proxy. Religion is 
natural to woman and often unnatural to man, the 
more so the more masculine he is. 



30 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

An open confession, though not so intended, of 
the failure of this conception of a feminine religion 
is found in a remarkable paragraph by Dr. James 
Stalker, published in the Chicago *' Standard'' of 
October 14, 1899: 

Nearly every one would feel that a woman atheist was 
more unnatural than a man making the same profession of 
skepticism ; indeed, to the unsophisticated such a being would 
appear a monster. On the other hand when woman becomes 
decidedly religious, she becomes most truly herself. When a 
strong man becomes religious, there is frequently in his ap- 
pearance, for a time at least, the suggestion of something un- 
natural ; it looks as if nature were being held down by main 
force, and the effects of the struggle and the scars of the fight 
are too manifest to be altogether agreeable. But in the oppo- 
site sex nature and grace combine so perfectly as to be indis- 
tinguishable ; grace shines as nature heightened and glorified. 

That is, by her nature religion is natural to 
woman, and by his nature unnatural to man. She 
becomes more of a woman, but he seems to become 
less of a man, in becoming a Christian, 

A still more pronounced emphasis on the feminine 
type is to be found in two articles by George Mathe- 
son, M. A., D. D., published in the '* Biblical World " 
of July and August, 1898, on '* The Feminine Ideal 
of Christianity." Doctor Matheson declares that 
the history of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation 
is the history of the struggle between two ideals — 
the masculine and the feminine. Christ's conquest 
of the world is the conquest of the male by the fe- 
male element — the seed of the woman bruising the 



EVIDENCES OF A FEMININE CHRISTIANITY 3 1 

head of the serpent. Christ is himself a feminine 
power, the apotheosis of the feminine ideal, and his 
era is the one in which the feminine or passive type 
shall be exalted. It is but justice to Doctor Mathe- 
son to say that he shows that the passive virtues 
must not be confounded with merely negative vir- 
tues, as is the prevailing tendency. He beautifully 
says that there are three genders of virtues as there 
are three genders of sex — masculine, feminine, and 
neuter. The masculine is power to do ; the femi- 
nine is power to bear ; the neuter is the inability 
to exert any power. By the Beatitudes we learn 
that the virtues called passive are to become the 
most powerful influences in the government of men, 
and the feminine type is to displace the reign of 
masculine power. 

With this strong statement of the case, should 
be put the famous phrase of the late T. De Witt 
Talmage, D. D., which he made the title of a ser- 
mon, ** The Motherhood of God "; and the declara- 
tion of Laurence Oliphant that the hope for women 
lies in the recognition by man of the divine femi- 
nine principle in God. 

Let these weighty arguments for the present 
stand. The cause of a feminine Christianity could 
not be more strongly presented, and they reveal the 
present status of Christianity and the religious life. 
With a few eddies, the current has been toward 
the goal of femininity. In its sweetest and best 
expression it makes man say : 



32 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

Nature made thee 
To temper man ; we had been brutes without you. 
Angels are painted fair, to look like you : 
There's in you all that we believe of heaven, 
Amazing brightness, purity, and truth, 
Eternal joy, and everlasting love. 



CHAPTER IV 
THE MENTAL SEXUAL DIFFERENCES 

IT was a woman — George Eliot — who wrote that a 
man's mind — what there is of it — has always the 
advantage of being masculine, as the smallest 
birch tree is of a higher kind than the most soaring 
palm, and even his ignorance is of sounder quality. 
The statement is true except in relation to the com- 
paratives ** higher" and ^* sounder." There is a 
masculine quality and there is a feminine quality of 
mind, though the exact characteristics of either can- 
not be named with absolute certainty. One writer 
can say that ** An ideal typical male is hard to de- 
fine, but there is a standard ideal woman " ; but 
most men would prefer to say that the typical ideal 
woman is a variable quantity. Both ideals are also 
changing. The man of a century ago has not ex- 
actly the same standard as the one of to-day. Note, 
by way of illustration, the change of the ideal Amer- 
ican personality from Washington through Lincoln to 
the present president of the United States. 

Woman too has a different ideal before her to- 
day. Both physically and mentally her training 
has changed. A distinction must be made between 
the incidental qualities of her nature due to her 
C 33 



34 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

environment — her narrow and routine life with 
conventional laws and limitations of body and 
mind — and those more fundamental qualities due 
in history to her wife's relationship and mother's 
heart. Not that her essential characteristics are to 
be based solely on her physical function and the 
mental traits necessary to the fulfilment of wife- 
hood and motherhood. In the economy of the 
kingdom of God, personality is of true worth in 
and of itself, and the worth of the soul cannot be 
stated merely in terms of evolution. 

The physical differences between the sexes com- 
prise many secondary characteristics which are 
tokens of varying mental life. The size of a man's 
brain is uniformly about ten per cent, larger than 
the woman's, larger than the mere difference in 
size of body can account for. Sir J. Crichton 
Browne in-formed Romanes that the gray matter of 
the female brain is shallower than that of the male, 
and also receives a proportionally smaller supply of 
blood ; and that as these differences date from an 
embryonic period of life, he concludes that they 
constitute a fundamental sexual distinction and not 
one that can be explained on the hypothesis that the 
educational advantages enjoyed by either the in- 
dividual man or by the male sex generally through a 
long series of generations have stimulated the growth 
of the brain in the one sex more than the other. 

The difference between the quantity and quality 
of brain matter indicates a difference of mental 



THE MENTAL SEXUAL DIFFERENCES 35 

power, though what this difference is must be 
merely a matter of observation. The quantity of 
brain matter is no indication of the lack or excess 
of mental ability, and the quality of brain matter 
can be determined by no one. In this observation 
of feminine mental differences, reference may be 
made to such books as ** Adolescence,*' by Pres. 
G. Stanley Hall ; ** Man and Woman, *' in the 
Contemporary Science series by Ellis ; and such 
magazine articles as ** Mental Differences Between 
Man and Woman '' in the *' Nineteenth Century,'' 
May, 1887, by G. J. Romanes ; and '' Sex in Mathe- 
matics," in the ** Educational Review,*' June, 
1895, by Prof. Davis E. Smith, of the Michigan 
State Normal School. 

It may be said at the start, that the man's mind 
is naturally more inductive, the woman's deductive. 
By what some have called intuition she generalizes 
quickly, but more often on the basis of insufficient 
facts, and so pays less attention to inconsistencies. 
She also is not, or has not been, of a creative 
genius. Woman takes truth as she finds it, while 
man wants to create truth. She excels in mental 
reproduction, but lacks on the whole originality. 
In religion, women have founded but a few sects ; 
and these, except in one or two instances of little 
moment, though this meager record must be chiefly 
explained by the absorption of ecclesiastical author- 
ity and training by the man. 

On the other side, the woman's perceptive powers 



36 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

are much more keen than the man's, and this 
on account of the greater refinement of her nerv- 
ous organization. This leads in turn to rapidity 
of thought which often seems like intuitive in- 
sight. The male mind moves more slowly and the 
conclusions are more deliberate, but the woman's 
mind is more quick to perceive and swifter of action. 
Hall has these sentences : ** Woman has rapid tact 
to extricate herself from difficulties. . . In quick 
readiness, when the sense of a paragraph is to 
be grasped in a minimum time and with equal 
knowledge of the subject, woman excels in quick 
apprehension of wholes. . . Her logical thought 
is slower, but her associations quicker than those 
of man." 

There is no doubt, be it said again, that much of 
this mental peculiarity is due to previous racial his- 
tory and present lack of educational advantage. 
It must be remembered that woman made her ap- 
pearance in the educational world only about a half- 
century ago, when Antoinette Brown entered Ober- 
lin College. Yet Professor Smith is able to show 
that of 10,000 examinations in New York State, 
sixty-three and six-tenths per cent of the young 
men passed and fifty-nine and two-tenths of the 
young women, though of those who did pass, the 
average was the same, thus proving that there was 
practically no difference in the grasp of such a men- 
tal discipline as mathematics. In 1900, Alice Free- 
man Palmer said : 



THE MENTAL SEXUAL DIFFERENCES 37 

Twenty-five years ago we were all sure — I was sure — that 
when women began in large numbers to go to college, and 
were free to choose, they would turn mainly to languages and 
literature ; to history, fme arts, music ; the esthetic side of 
life. I thought of their sympathy, their imagination, their 
affection, and I expected they would excel in the humanities. 
I never foresaw that they would turn impassioned to pure 
mathematics, to physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy. 
Yet that is the evidence of twenty-five years. 

In the realm of emotions, women are certainly 
superior. There are individual exceptions among 
women to this rule as in almost all other traits, and 
many women who themselves are examples of 
emotional extremes, deny the fact. Unfortunately, 
an emotional disposition is made the proof of lack 
of intellectual power. But it is only the misuse of 
emotion, not the abundance, which is to be depre- 
cated. The theory of Professor James, of Harvard, 
is that the bodily changes follow directly the per- 
ception of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of 
the same changes as they occur is the emotion ; 
that is, the physical disturbance of the heart, blood- 
vessels, viscera, and muscles, are not the conse- 
quences but the cause of the emotion. Granting 
this, it follows that there is sure to be more emotion 
in women, not primarily because they are mentally 
more volatile, but because of a higher nervous 
organism which responds more readily and to a 
greater degree to the exciting causes. This is what 
Ellis probably means when he explains that the 
emotionality of women can never be brought to the 



38 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

male standard, because of the physiological differ- 
ences which in turn are connected with many 
secondary sexual differences, like the tendency of 
women to anaemia, etc. . 

There is of course an excess of nervous excita- 
bility in some women by reason of environment, 
and in all women by means of heredity ; but such 
is not the normal condition. Dr. Sarah Hackett 
Stevenson, of Chicago, goes so far as to say that 
the idea that woman is born to nervous and hyster- 
ical conditions is wrong. Give growing girls plenty 
of exercise and fresh air and there will be fewer 
nervous women. Yet it is an accepted fact that 
hysteria, the symptoms of which are a weakness 
of the nervous system, showing itself by a ten- 
dency to over-action and irritability, morbid sensi- 
bility and mental anxiety, is much more common 
to women. Romanes declared that judgment with 
women is more frequently exercised from the side 
of the emotions ; Hall, that their vaso-motor sys- 
tem is more excitable, they are more emotional ; 
Professor Coe in his ^* Spiritual Life,'' that two of 
the best established general differences between 
the male and the female mind are these : first, the 
female mind tends more than the male to feeling ; 
second, it is more suggestible. 

It is a somewhat newer method of describing 
woman's peculiar make-up to ascribe to her sug- 
gestibility. To be subject to suggestion, is simply 
to be subject to hypnotic influences. Any medical 



THE MENTAL SEXUAL DIFFERENCES 39 

writer or experienced hypnotist can present the 
same conclusions in regard to women. Hypnotism is 
due to decreased control of the higher nervous cen- 
ters and an increased activity of the lower centers. 
Allied to hypnotism is hysteria on the one side, and, 
on the other, catalepsy, ecstasy, and somnambu- 
lism. In ecstasy or trance, visions are often seen 
and these can be recalled in the waking hours. 
Ellis, who treats this subject fully, gives the result 
of an investigation made by Prof. Henry Sedgwick, 
who examined 17,000 persons in regard to halluci- 
nation, and found that 656 men and 1,033 women 
of the number affirmed that at some time in their 
life they had experienced an hallucination. Ellis 
concludes that women respond to stimuli, psychic 
or physical, more readily than men. 

On the basis of these facts, it is fair to conclude 
that women are more often hypnotized ; that they 
go in flocks, and in social matters are less prone 
to stand out with salient individuality ; that with 
them influence is more potent than argument. 
Ellis declares that even in trivial matters the aver- 
age woman more easily accepts statements and 
opinions than a man, and in more serious matters 
she is prepared to die for a statement or an opinion, 
provided that her emotional nature is sufficiently 
thrilled. However, in suggestibility as in mere emo- 
tionality, it is certain that a woman's nature can be 
modified. The woman of a century ago who could 
more easily faint on occasion, could also see visions ; 



40 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

but now she either does not have so many, or does 
not confess them when she does have them. Hal- 
lucination is not nearly so common among the civi- 
lized as among the uncivilized, among the educated 
as among the ignorant. Emotion is, to a large 
degree, a question of control, and this control can 
be perfected by training. 

It is with special reference to woman's intellec- 
tuality, emotionality, and suggestibility, that three 
other feminine characteristics can be named. The 
first is, that while man dwells more in the abstract, 
woman dwells more in the concrete. The child to 
her is a concrete object of love and endeavor. Per- 
haps this is what John Stuart Mill had in mind 
when he said that the general bent of her 
talents is towards the practical ; but more prob- 
ably he was noticing the confined sphere of activity 
and common household duties to which women 
were necessarily limited. It is well known that 
Herbert Spencer felt that woman has suffered from 
an earlier cessation of individual evolution necessi- 
tated by nature's preparation for maternity, and 
therefore lost what are the latest products of human 
evolution — the power of abstract reasoning, and 
that more abstract of the emotions, the sentiment 
of justice. Woman, at least, sees more vividly 
the things near-by, and the universal is generally 
conceived by her, if conceived at all, through the 
medium of the few individual persons and things of 
her common experience. 



THE MENTAL SEXUAL DIFFERENCES 4I 

The second added characteristic is woman's af- 
fectionate disposition. Woman loves more deeply 
than man, and without love or the return of love, 
there is little that can satisfy her nature. There 
are few women brave enough to work their way to 
a distant goal in the face of complete indifference. 
Mrs. Annie Besant, with all her leadership, shows 
th^ feminine desire for an object of devotion far 
more than she realized when she said : ** Looking 
back over my life, 1 see that its key-note, through 
all the blunders and blind mistakes and clumsy 
follies, has been the longing for sacrifice to some- 
thing felt as greater than self.'' Women are pre- 
eminently affectionate, sympathetic. 

By virtue of this affectionate and sympathetic 
disposition, women are also altruistic. They are 
ready for long-suffering and self-denial. They 
begin with the child in the arms ; they forget 
not the outcast of the streets. They have been 
prominent both in quiet ministrations at home and 
in such public reforms as remove dangers from the 
tempted and distress from the weak. They are 
self-forgetful and unselfish more than man, and 
show in all the broader relationships of life some- 
thing of the self-sacrifice that they have had as 
wife and mother. 

A fourth characteristic is conservatism. This is 
in part an intellectual attitude, but is also a quality 
of emotionality, love choosing a concrete object 
and wanting no other. Woman lives in the known 



42 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

and in the past, and therefore her influence is for 
stability with the disadvantage of a lessened varia- 
bility and individuality. She has especially to do 
with the task of preserving every acquired good 
with the disadvantage often of perpetuating error 
and preserving meaningless custom. No sweeter 
expression of this characteristic, as well as two 
others, could be found than that of Pres. Caro- 
line Hazard, of Wellesley College, in the *' Sunday- 
school Times " of June 23, 1900 : 

There are three ways in v/hich women are preeminent: 
they are the binders together of society ; they are the beauti- 
fiers of life ; and they are the preservers of morals. That is, 
women must stand for conservatism, for grace, for purity. . . 
They are the great conservative force in society. Not only 
are traditions handed down by them, but they have to hold 
the more headlong processes of thought in check. Naturally 
a woman falls back on her experience. . . A woman must be 
trained in a very liberal school not to have conservatism 
degenerate into obstinacy. 

After saying that a woman is less original, more 
emotional, more suggestible, whereby it can also 
be said that she is less abstract in thought, more 
affectionate, altruistic, and conservative of customs 
and morals, the point is reached where it can be 
said that woman is anabolic, and man katabolic. 
No one can accuse woman of lack of courage ; in 
fact, in the power of endurance, she is uniformly 
superior to man ; but her courage is more of a 
fortitude which submits to an inevitable burden. 



THE MENTAL SEXUAL DIFFERENCES 43 

She does, as Professor Lombroso shows, bear pain 
and operations better than man, but she is less 
aggressive and independent. Her love of sym- 
pathy, her acceptance of insistent ideas, her con- 
servative bent, her lack of originality, are all allied 
to her dependence and lack of force. The man 
has courage, pluck, robustness, leadership, will- 
power, firmness, decision, determination. He de- 
lights in competition and rivalry. He is a born 
fighter. So Madame de Stael said that men err 
from selfishness, women because they are weak. 
He has the tenacity of purpose to overcome ob- 
stacles ; she has more fear and timidity. He con- 
quers new territory ; she cultivates the old. He 
overcomes by force ; she by love. 

If in this comparison of the volitional element in 
the masculine and feminine natures, the woman 
seems to appear to disadvantage, it is but another 
proof of the awakening of the masculine ideal, and 
also of the failure to discriminate between the 
relative value of both ideals in the appropriate sex. 
The woman loves strength in the man. The more 
virile he is, even sometimes rough and cruel, the 
more he attracts her. On the other side, the man 
loves beauty, grace, and gentleness in the woman. 
It is our error that we have often carried both our 
masculine and feminine ideals to an extreme. It is 
true that at times and in certain localities there has 
arisen the exaltation of the non-personalized woman, 
like every other woman in the one special trait. 



44 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

that she is frail and dependent, clinging and lifeless. 
In Europe, it is more difficult than in America for 
the woman to differentiate herself from her asso- 
ciates. Unfortunately, the Bible is supposed to be 
an accessory to this assassination of feminine per- 
sonality, and the classified woman is supposed to 
be the obedient, unthinking, subservient wife and 
daughter. 

Again, taking the woman's physical relationship 
to man as the basis, and with her natural mental 
and moral relationship to him added, it is not too 
much to agree with Spencer that in the evolu- 
tionary process there has been a fit adjustment of 
behavior, an ability to please, a love of approba- 
tion, an ability to disguise feelings, and an admira- 
tion of power. The female has always robed her- 
self in attractive beauty. In her is the consumma- 
tion of the artistic sense. Naturally, a woman is 
more artistic than scientific, though oftentimes in 
woman, as occurred in Darwin, the love for poetry 
and music is dwarfed. She is a good musician to 
reproduce, but not to create. She is a good painter, 
for she imitates well. She is a good actress, for 
her artistic sense allied to her strong emotionality 
enables her to identify herself with her part. She 
is a good speaker, though so far she has not been 
able to excel in lengthened reasoned discourse. 
Whatever pertains to harmony, beauty, charm, she 
can claim as her own ; and she is a subtle critic of 
that which adds to the useful, the ornamental. 



THE MENTAL SEXUAL DIFFERENCES 45 

Such is woman, emotional, suggestible, affec- 
tionate, conservative, dependent, artistic, moral, a 
siii generis. As an adult has no moral right to 
judge a child by adult standards, so the man has 
no right to judge a woman by masculine standards. 
At the best, she is the refiner, conserver, and beau- 
tifier of life. *'A woman," says George Eliot, 
** ought to produce the effect of exquisite music.'' 

She was like 
A dream of poetry, that may not be 
Written or told — beautiful exceedingly. 



CHAPTER V 

THE MODERN VERSUS THE BIBLICAL 
RELIGIOUS TYPE 

THE modern type of the religious life is feminine. 
No better proof can be given than the preva- 
lent representation of heaven in which a man 
is only inserted in obedience to biblical exactness, 
and then is made to appear as nearly feminine as 
possible. This is more remarkable when many 
women leaders feel that Christianity does not do 
justice to them. Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton 
rebels bitterly against the so-called Christian les- 
sons of woman's inferiority in the scale of being 
and her subjection to man. The Old Testament, 
she says, represents her as a marplot in creation, 
an afterthought, the origin of sin in collusion with 
the devil, cursed of God in maternity, and marriage 
for her made a slavery. Nevertheless, practically, 
the woman has reigned in her subjection, and the 
hand that has rocked the cradle has ruled the world. 
The woman who could train the boy in the home 
has been able to give him a feminine ideal of religion. 
That woman is more emotional is manifest in the 
importance attached to emotional elements in relig- 
ion. The investigations of writers like Starbuck 
46 



MODERN VERSUS BIBLICAL TYPE 47 

have repeatedly shown that men become Christians 
oftener for rational, women for emotional reasons ; 
and it is on the emotional element that the strongest 
emphasis has been placed in the popular religious 
appeals. Examine a modern prayer-meeting, and 
it will be seen that the test of the value of the 
meeting is in the extent and quality of the feeling 
produced. The joy, peace, and happiness are a 
proof that God is present, as he is not supposed to 
be with the cold, hard-headed business man who is 
computing his accounts. Not in the action of the 
will or the intellect is God primarily manifest, but in 
the emotions. Revivals have been most successful 
when most feeling has been manifest. There is 
danger of repudiating emotion in religion ; it has its 
place. But it must not usurp the place of the will 
and intellect ; and that it has is an example of the 
over-feminization of the religious life. 

Then again, woman is more suggestible, and this 
characteristic is a standard of religious experience 
generally. Prof. George Albert Coe, in his book 
on **The Spiritual Life,'' has given the results of 
an extended examination on this subject, and he 
shows that those who are easily hypnotized, the 
suggestible, are the very individuals who have 
these striking phenomena of the Christian life, 
often called religious experiences. Now woman is 
more affected by external influences than man, 
gives way to example and precept, and is more 
subject to hallucination and striking experiences. 



48 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

Women are converted oftener in the revival meet- 
ing ; men oftener alone. Worldliness has been 
charged upon the church because the old-time 
revival seems to have died out except in isolated 
cases. It is rather true that man has asserted his 
nature, has become less suggestible, and where his 
conversion was awaited on the revival type he has 
remained outside of the fold of the church. 

The present trend of religious thought is to em- 
phasize the personal relationship of the believer to 
Christ. A woman has a more intimate relationship 
with Christ ; while with a man, even though he 
look on Christ as a personal friend, there is more 
intellectual content to his conception and more de- 
votion to the heroic found in Christ. Both are cor- 
rect relationships, but the formulation of belief is 
a necessary condition of the masculine mind. A 
man becomes entangled in the intellectual difificul- 
ties of religion, and when he works his way through 
to his own satisfaction, it is generally by thought 
and with a definite idea of the personality of Christ. 
When he thinks of God he combines in God those 
attributes which he must ascribe to the Deity. 
With woman, religion is more concrete, faith more 
personal, love more emotional. To-day dogma, 
even by man, is repudiated, but that is due to that 
feminine conservatism which has held an outgrown 
dogma, the nomenclature of a long-past philosophy. 
Men think to-day more than they ever have thought 
before, only they want fact not fancy. They build 



MODERN VERSUS BIBLICAL TYPE 49 

up theoretical systems with as much zest as ever, 
only they want legitimate premises. The name 
** dogma *' is tabooed, but the masculine mind which 
once demanded dogma still demands it, and is still 
producing it. 

The altruistic sentiment of woman is the ideal of 
society, though not always the practice. But altru- 
ism may be too sentimental. The curse of all 
charity is indiscriminate giving. It may be love, 
but it is not wisdom for the mother to yield her 
better judgment to the whims of a son. There is 
too much of the sentimental altruism in religious 
teaching to-day, and the ruggedness of the law has 
been smoothed away to the freedom of license. 
There is an altruism that is allied to chivalry, and 
this is masculine. The word ''chivalry" is ety- 
mologically the same as the word cavalry, and in 
the Italian and Spanish the same word does service 
for both ideas. Chivalry is martial, and is the dis- 
play of soldierly aggressiveness in behalf of the 
weak. *' The only chivalry worth having,'' sweetly 
writes Louisa M. Alcott, **is the readiness to pay 
deference to the old, protect the feeble, and serve 
womankind, regardless of age, rank, or color''; 
but that altruism which discards punishment, ban- 
ishes hell, winks at lax habits of morality, makes 
church discipline a farce, public justice a fiasco, and 
social purity an abnormality, may not be woman's 
desire, but it is the result of a feminine altruism. 

Woman is dependent, and the modern religious 

D 



50 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

life is far too much a self-abnegation that makes the 
Christian lose his independence, cultivate only 
meekness, and subdue his natural assertiveness. 
Self-sacrifice carried to an extreme has begotten a 
race of would-be martyrs, and obedience to Christ 
is made synonymous with the loss of manhood. 
The passive virtues are exalted beyond proportion. 
Woman's natural religiousness is so far conceded 
that the religious life is made to include just those 
characteristics which she possesses, and man is so 
much by nature farther away that the path back to 
God is a longer one, and is only to be traversed by 
denying what God has made him. It is of the same 
piece of argument that the intellect is made the 
instrument of confusion and doubt, and the **heart '* 
(/. c, not the whole of man's self, but his emotions) 
the sole faculty of knowing God. The more intel- 
lect, therefore, the farther a man is from God, and 
the greater obstacles in the way of his return. It 
would be a pity, indeed, for us to say that since 
woman has the gift of trusting and loving and the 
sense of dependence, she is more easily guided into 
the true path, for thereby it would be necessary to 
say that God created man naturally incapable of 
exercising the religious faculty, if indeed he has 
one. The Bible does say, *' Except ye become as 
little children, ye cannot enter the kingdom of 
God," but it does not say, ''Except ye become as 
women, ye cannot enter the kingdom of God.'' 
Woman has a love for the beautiful, and here 



MODERN VERSUS BIBLICAL TYPE 51 

again we find the feminine trait exalted in the 
church. Sermons must be rhetorical and oratorical, 
pleasing to the artistic sense. There is more 
** seeming'' than ** being/' too little of rugged 
simplicity in the statement of eternal truths. Log- 
ical thought is not so acceptable, but beautiful de- 
scription especially adapted to produce emotions is 
much desired. Women are more attracted by ap- 
pearances, more fastidious, more subservient to 
social rules, which rules aim to cultivate good form. 
The other parts of the church service, especially 
the music, must be in strict accordance with the 
artistic sense. Ruggedness, masculinity, is not de- 
sirable. No wonder Professor Starbuck found that 
girls express a pleasure in religious observances 
more frequently than the boys by a ratio of seven- 
teen to seven, while, on the contrary, boys express 
a distinct dislike for them more often than the girls 
by a ratio of twenty-one to nine. Men like a 
feminine woman as the counterpart of themselves ; 
but they do not like a feminine service which is 
supposed to be an expression of their own mascu- 
line nature. They are not women, and cannot act 
like women. 

Now the biblical conception of the Christian's 
life is not so one-sidedly feminine. There are 
many passages which indicate the aggressive and 
masculine character of the Christian life. Paul's 
martial comparisons are to the point. A soldier is 
to be obedient and disciplined, but he must also be 



52 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

courageous and energetic. He must put on the 
whole armor of God ; and, while it is true that all 
but one of the implements of warfare are defensive, 
yet the soldier is to have skill and strength and 
vigor in using his sword. The masculine type has, 
indeed, been connected with cruelty, but this is the 
excess of power and not its rightful use. 

In other biblical representations the circumstances 
under which admonitions have been given have not 
always been clearly recognized. That Paul com- 
manded the Corinthian women to keep silence in 
the church is clearly recognized to-day in the North, 
at least, as a temporary adjustment to social rules. 
The reader of the Gospels can see how much of 
what even Christ said was uttered in view of 
the Pharisaic and Sadducean prejudices. Christ 
preached to his times, as did Paul and every Old 
Testament prophet. He was the Son of Man, but 
he was an Israelite and spoke his truth for the help 
of Jewish disciples and the instruction of a Jewish 
audience. The Beatitudes, for example, are an 
eternal statement of the way of blessedness, but 
they are not inclusive of all Christian qualities. 
They were uttered in view of the mixed Jewish 
audience under the domination of Pharisees in 
whose life and in whose teachings was a lamentable 
lack of the passive virtues. 

Take again the word "love,'' used so often in 
the command to love God and to love man. The 
modern word 'Move'' may simply mean affection 



MODERN VERSUS BIBLICAL TYPE 53 

mingled with sentiment, and be a matter of attrac- 
tion not choice. But the Greek word has a higher 
meaning. It includes the trend of the whole being 
toward the object of choice, and is based on high 
moral grounds. An objector declares that he can- 
not love his neighbor ; he is not attracted. But a 
Mackay can say in the heart of Africa that he loves 
his people. A study of the twenty-first chapter of 
John, with the variation in the Greek word 'Move," 
at least has some bearing on this topic. There is a 
love which is mere infatuation and emotion ; but 
there is a love which is the going out in unselfish 
devotion of a man's heart. 

Medieval art has always pictured John as a fair 
youth whose face was sweetly feminine and whose 
bearing was a combination of grace and modesty. 
But the real John was a different character. The 
three instances before the crucifixion in which he is 
prominently mentioned are : First, his request that 
fire might be brought down upon the Samaritans for 
their inhospitality to the Master ; second, the for- 
bidding of the outsider from casting out demons in 
Christ's name ; and third, the request to have a 
seat next to Christ in the establishment of his 
kingdom. It is true that on each occasion John 
was rebuked ; yet not for his aggressiveness, but 
for the method of expression. He was told in fact 
that Christ's cup should be his cup and Christ's 
baptism should be his baptism. John grew sweeter 
as the years rolled on ; but he who could write, 



54 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

'*Love one another/' also wrote, ** I write unto 
you, young men, because ye are strong." 

In I Cor. i6 : 13 is a favorite text for men, but it 
means more tlian the surface rendering indicates. 
The four words, ** Quit you like men,'' are a trans- 
lation of but one word in the Greek which is formed 
by taking the word which in the Greek means a 
man as contrasted to a woman, and making a verb 
out of it in the imperative mood. This is the only 
place in the New Testament where it is used, but 
it occurs also in the Septuagint of Josh, i : 6, where 
Joshua is told to be strong. The word is not the 
generic term **man," and so does not mean that 
we should live as human beings with the due use 
of reason, will-power, and conscience, although 
this would have made a worthy admonition ; but 
it is an appeal to the man to live as a man 
should ; in other words, it tells him to be manly, 
not effeminate. 

How often has the verse on losing one's life been 
quoted, and how often has the emphasis been not 
on the finding, but on the losing. That which is 
lost is not the self ; that is saved. The losing is 
but a preparation for the finding. Self-denial is not 
the end of life, but the taking up of one's mission 
— the cross — which is God's will as embodied in 
service to mankind. The Bible wants self-denial, 
not self-abnegation ; and that not for itself, but for 
the consequent self-realization, self-perfection, self- 
expression. 



MODERN VERSUS BIBLICAL TYPE 55 

There are few passages oftener misinterpreted 
when quoted than Phil. 2 : 12, 13 : ''So then, my 
beloved, even as ye have always obeyed, not as in 
my presence only, but now much more in my ab- 
sence, work out your own salvation with fear and 
trembling ; for it is God who worketh in you both 
to will and to work for his good pleasure/' 

The simplest and sometimes the accepted inter- 
pretation of the verses is that we are to work 
'* out " in the external life what God works ** in '' 
the internal life ; but this does not correspond to 
the exact meaning of the words in the verses. The 
words '* work out '' mean to effect, to bring about 
a certain result. They emphasize that permanence 
of effort, that constant endeavor, that bring, as 
their consequence, salvation. The word ** own '' 
in '* work out your own salvation,'' does not mean 
the human achievement as opposed to God's assist- 
ance, but to the aid furnished by Paul's presence. 
Paul found that the Philippian members were 
depending upon him, and not exulting in the bound- 
less spiritual resources within themselves. He ex- 
horts them that whether he himself is present or 
absent, to work out their own salvation. There is 
more inherent power in the Christian than in all 
human pillars of support. '* Be strong and show 
thyself a man." 

But what is the ground for encouragement ? 
This, that within us God himself is effectively 
operative. He it is who enables us to work out our 



56 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

own salvation. To achieve this salvation God be- 
stows two blessings, the first being the desire, the 
taste, the inclination, the wish, yes, the purpose, 
the resolution to do God's will. This, however, 
may not be sufficient. The wish may be a blasted 
hope and the resolution may fail of execution. The 
prodigal may resolve and yet never go to his father. 
''For to will is present with me, but to do that 
which is good is not. For the good which I would, 
I do not : but the evil which I would not, that I 
practise.'' God, therefore, adds to the first bless- 
ing a second and indispensable blessing, the power 
and ability as well as the inclination and resolution 
to achieve. 

Two essential principles are enunciated in this 
Philippian passage. First, salvation is an achieve- 
ment. Salvation is presented to us in the Bible in 
two aspects — as a state immediately entered upon 
at the time of conversion and as the goal of life for 
which we hope (i Thess. 5 : 8), and which is to be 
revealed to us in the last time (i Peter i : 5). 
Sometimes this final state of salvation is repre- 
sented as God's gift. The transformation "into 
the same image from glory to glory " with the goal 
of being like Jesus is '' from the Lord the Spirit" 
(2 Cor. 3 : 18). '*He who began a good work in 
you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ " 
(Phil. I : 6). Sometimes it is represented as an 
achievement. We are to " attain " unto the resur- 
rection of the dead ; to ''overcome," to " strive to 



MODERN VERSUS BIBLICAL TYPE 57 

enter in/' to win the ** prize." Salvation is not a 
mere condition, it is an attainment. 

But the second essential principle enunciated in 
the verses is that salvation can only be an achieve- 
ment through the divine reinforcement. *M can do 
all things in him that strengtheneth me " (Phil. 4 : 
13), '* striving according to his w^orking which work- 
eth in me mightily '' (Col. i : 29). ** I labored more 
abundantly than they all : yet not I, but the grace 
of God which was in me '' (i Cor. 15 : 10). And 
so many other passages. 

In the attainment of righteousness and the subju- 
gation of sin, four solutions have been proposed. 
First, self-redemption by the natural powers inher- 
ent in human nature. Such is Kant's view, that as 
a nature perfectly pure can fall by its own will into 
evil, so a man in a depraved state can return to 
strength and purity again as he forms for himself a 
lofty ideal and lives within the pale of an ethical 
community, that is, the church. 

A second view is that upon our subjection to God 
we henceforth become the harp to be played on, the 
piece of clay to be molded, the stone to be placed 
in the temple wall. We do nothing, God does all. 
But we are not God's slaves ; we are his freemen. 
God wants men, not machines and automata. 

The third view presents a certain method of di- 
vine and human co-operation. We do what we can 
to help ourselves, and when our natural or redeemed 
powers reach a limit, God assumes the burden at 



58 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

our request. The longer we live and the stronger 
we grow the less we need God's interposition. 
Every divine rescue is practically a miracle, since it 
is non-natural. God's assistance is a deus ex 
machina on the plan of the Greek tragedies, where 
gods always appeared when the plot was inex- 
tricably involved and human ingenuity and re- 
sources hopelessly at loss. The great defects of 
such a view are that every divine act of assistance 
renders a Christian less a man, and as the penum- 
bra of the miraculous is regarded as God's particu- 
lar domain with the circle ever growing smaller with 
zero as a limit, faith is gradually dispensed with, 
and the religious life becomes an increasingly self- 
sufficient life. 

Is there a fourth view of the religious life .? See 
what the needed elements are. One is that of the 
freedom of the will. Salvation cannot be salva- 
tion if it makes slaves of men, for the highest type 
of the Christian is that of the noblest freedman. 
Christ said : '' Because I live, ye shall live also," 
that is, in a separate and a worthful existence. 
The goal for which I am striving is a will so ethi- 
cized as to choose moral ends not perforce, but of 
freedom ; and yet it can never be ethicized unless 
every good act is an expression of the human as 
well as the divine will. 

The other element to be considered is that of the 
indwelling Christ, to be able to say with Luther : 
*' Jesus Christ lives here " ; or with Augustine as 



MODERN VERSUS BIBLICAL TYPE 59 

he escapes his old companion : ** I run because 1 
am not I " ; or Paul : ** I have been crucified with 
Christ ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ 
liveth in me : and that life which I now live in the 
flesh I live in faith " (Gal. 2 : 20). God does all ; 
man does all. Beyond mere fellowship is Christ's 
vital union with the individual heart, whereby God's 
presence gives us energy to realize our own endeav- 
ors, not by enslaving, but by enfranchising the 
will, invigorating it, energizing it, vitalizing it, until 
we reach the truest freedom of the fulness of 
God's indwelling ; until with Augustine we can say : 
'*We will, but God works in us the willing; we 
work, but God works in us the working." Thus 
and thus only shall we escape the failure of the 
Galatians who, having begun in Spirit, thought to 
be perfected in the flesh. Thus and thus only shall 
faith, by which alone we render available to our- 
selves the motor power of God, be more and more 
indispensable through life. Will is not an instru- 
ment separate from ourselves which we can use as 
we will ; it is ourselves acting. God's act, therefore, 
cannot be our act ; and if will and personality are 
to be free while at the same time God aids us, it 
must be by the undercurrents of life whose sluice- 
way we open through the exercise of faith. 

Such is faith, and a more masculine act cannot 
be conceived. It is not to be a slave that God 
calls man to himself, but to exercise his will-power. 
Thus the modern and the biblical conceptions of 



6o THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

the Christian life do not agree. The one is pre- 
vailingly feminine ; the other is both masculine and 
feminine. It will be no easy task to reintroduce 
the masculine ideal, but this is prerequisite to the 
rejuvenation of the life of the church. It will come, 
but not until the Bible is better understood and a 
true philosophy of the Christian life is formulated. 



CHAPTER VI 
SOME PRESUPPOSITIONS OF SEX IN RELIGION 

NOTHING in Christian thought needs revision 
more than the idea of the supernatural. It 
certainly is not something of thought or 
energy which is appropriated by us without the 
natural powers of mind and soul. If the super- 
natural which comes to us is not also natural, there 
is no development in belief or character. If we 
understand God's revelation, it is through the 
powers that we possess, vitalized, it is true, by the 
Spirit of God. If the growth in grace is from the 
Spirit, the habits are our own. Religion has been 
regarded far too much as an intruder, an alien 
which has to be naturalized. It is considered to be 
an addition to life, a sort of hot-house production, 
an effusion of weak natures, as Nitzsch says, a de- 
formity, an excrescence, a warping of nature, instead 
of being only a certain type of life, and that the 
most normal. 

Sometimes this idea of the unnaturalness of the 
Christian life reaches the extreme found in the 
society of Plymouth Brethren which had its origin 
in 1827 and received its name from Plymouth, Eng- 
land, which was the center of its endeavors. They 

61 



62 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

affirmed that every child of God had two natures, 
the new being produced, not out of, but in addition 
to the old, a new entity ; the old nature, which was 
once the self, but now so no longer, still existing. 
The new nature is sinless, but the old nature is irre- 
claimably bad and is to be destroyed at death or at 
the Lord's second coming. According to this 
''shifting of selfhood,'' the man could sin and still 
be sinless, for the act could be imputed to the old 
nature. This doctrine, of course, is both bad 
psychology and bad biblical exegesis. 

On the other side, there is also danger of making 
the Christian life only natural and including in the 
" natural " the excess of all passions. Edwin 
Checkley, writing on **A Natural Way of Physical 
Training," says that the significant thing in connec- 
tion with the brute creation is that they have no 
athletics. The lion keeps his marvelous strength 
without extraordinary effort, and so with other 
beasts. If we are to take any special lesson from 
the lower animals, it must be that the best strength 
is that produced by natural habits. This is in 
general true of the body, although even the bodily 
structure is changed by mental and moral habits. 
But it is not altogether true of the spiritual nature. 
'* Natural " does not, therefore, mean to live accord- 
ing to the instincts, desires, motives, passions, that 
first make themselves felt. We have in human 
nature that hereditary taint which reaches back 
through a long ancestral line. But the word 



PRESUPPOSITIONS OF SEX IN RELIGION 63 

** natural '* here means that living which is nor- 
mal and best fulfils God's ideal for us as he has 
constituted us. 

Man was made in the likeness of God (Gen. 5 : 
i), and Adam in turn begat a son in his own like- 
ness (Gen. 5 : 3). This image was not lost in the 
fall, for *' whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man 
shall his blood be shed : for in the image of God 
made he man.'' That image meant at least, will, 
intelligence, affection, personality, moral powers, 
including the power of knowing God. To live in 
accordance with the image of God implanted within 
us is to act not abnormally but normally ; it is to 
be true to ourselves. The Christian life is an at- 
tempt to restore that image, the second creation 
fulfilling the first, and so making a normal man. 
Sin is an intruder. To think of sin as natural is to 
lose the battle. Hell is not an arbitrary punish- 
ment of God. Animalism is not the original dis- 
position of man, and the sinless man is the only true 
man that the world knows. 

Christ was the perfect revelation of God in the 
only substance that can perfectly represent the 
divine, the human. Christ's human life must not 
be underestimated. He grew physically, mentally, 
spiritually, fighting temptations, meeting suffering, 
learning obedience, trusting, praying, the perfect 
normal man. There was nothing abnormal about 
him. Now the Christian life is the Christ life. The 
goal for each believer is to be transformed into his 



64 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

image, to be like him, to be a full-grown man in 
Christ Jesus. Human nature was capable of re- 
ceiving Christ and it was in human nature that 
his life was lived. What he did once he is repeat- 
ing. There is a reincarnation for all, for man and 
God are kin. This is why, when a man sees 
Christ, he finds what corresponds to the best 
within him. 

The religious life has been far too narrow and 
one-sided. The doctrine of God's immanence has 
not permeated Christian belief and practice. There 
are supposed to be two kinds of life's activities : first, 
the so-called religious, Bible reading, praying, attend- 
ing church services, and doing church work ; second, 
family, social, business, and political duties, and the 
pursuit of art, literature, and science. Here are 
seemingly opposing interests. Those of the one class 
seem to be fostered only at the expense of the other. 
How shall we obtain equilibrium of interest ? How 
shall we secure unification of life ? 

One of the false methods is to banish altogether 
the worldly interests, forgetful of the prayer of 
Christ : '* I pray not that thou shouldest take them 
out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them 
from the evil one.'' This was one of the methods 
of classical heathenism. Antisthenes, the founder 
of the Cynics, imitated a beggar with staff and 
scrip, so as to avoid all of those desires that fetter, 
attempting to be self-sufficient and independent of 
everything — marriage, society, politics, wealth, 



PRESUPPOSITIONS OF SEX IN RELIGION 65 

honor, enjoyment. Such was the false conception 
of the true life presented as an offset to the culture 
of the day, both ideals incomplete and one-sided. 
The modern heathenism attempts often the same 
goal. The rule of Buddhism is, *' Having abandoned 
these things, without adopting others, let men, calm 
and independent, not desire existence,'' which in- 
stead of being the complete, is the narrowest possible 
life, not expansion in the ocean of life, but the 
extinction of life altogether. 

The Christian church has always been harassed 
with the same solution of the problem, though less 
to-day than formerly. Basil the Great, a Greek 
father of the fourth century, thought that the only 
way to escape the world, the flesh, and the devil, 
was to retire to a retreat. In a letter to a friend, 
he said, however: *' Although I have left behind 
me the diversions of the city as a cause of innu- 
merable evils, I have not been able to leave myself.'* 
Cowardice is a poor substitute for faith. 

To-day, though we have abandoned the hermit 
ideal, we often think of these other interests as 
necessary evils or pleasant diversions, from which 
heaven will at last set us free. We leave both in- 
terests in suppressed conflict in this life, establish- 
ing a perplexing dualism. There is no solution, 
but only a compromise, a truce, until we can lay 
down our burdens and ask the Lord to forgive us. 

This dualism is expressed chiefly in four ways. In 

regard to time, we declare that the Sabbath or Sun- 
E 



66 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

day is a holy day to be given to the service of God, 
while the six days belong to us. We hear many 
complaints of the desecration of the Sabbath. Per- 
haps the chief reason is that we have too much of 
the desecration of Monday. Men have given up 
largely the idea that there is a magical virtue in the 
observance of the Sabbath and therefore have 
chosen to observe it as they please. We have not 
fully learned that the Sabbath was made for man, 
not man for the Sabbath. When the week from 
Monday to Saturday is used for the Lord, there will 
be no difficulty with the proper use of Sunday. Our 
difficulty is that we have failed to unify our life. 

The same mistake is noticeable in our treatment 
of the church building. We frequently speak of 
coming into the presence of God as we enter the 
church or begin a service. The man who has not 
been in the presence of God before he enters the 
building is not apt to enter God's presence by going 
into a building simply because it has been dedicated 
to the service of God. We are much accustomed 
to apply all the references of the ancient temple to 
the modern church building. Yet Christ declared 
that neither in Gerizim nor Jerusalem should men 
worship the Father. Wherever a man prays, there 
is his temple. The grass may carpet his chancel, 
the trees be the columns, the sky the dome, but 
there is his cathedral if he prays in spirit and truth. 
Paul declares, ''Ye are the temple of God.'' Not 
the church building as such, but the person himself 



PRESUPPOSITIONS OF SEX IN RELIGION 67 

is the abode of the Shekinah of God, and all places 
are holy places to the Christian. 

The same mistake is made in regard to money. 
The one-tenth is supposed to purchase immunity 
for the nine-tenths. But all money belongs to 
God, and evidently the money spent for the pur- 
chase of food, of clothes, of enjoyment, should be 
expended as conscientiously as the money spent for 
church and missionary work. 

It is also supposed, though less and less so to- 
day, that the sacredness of the office renders the 
person of the minister especially sacred. Ministers 
seem to have a better opportunity of living the 
consecrated life. They are doing nothing but re- 
ligious work, and do not seem to have the same 
problem that their parishioners have. A young 
man asked President Stott, of Franklin College, 
Indiana, how long he would have to stay in college 
before he could be called '* Reverend.'' He did 
not recognize that the title did not make the man, 
nor that all men should be reverend. All, not the 
ministers alone, are called to be kings and priests, 
and all are to be witnesses of God. The words, 
** Go ye into all the world,'' were given not only to 
the apostles who did not leave Jerusalem when the 
first persecution drove the disciples out, but to all 
believers. 

The object of living is the establishment of the 
kingdom of God, and that kingdom means not only 
the reign of God in the individual, but that all 



68 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

relationships of life — family, social, industrial, 
political, institutional, ecclesiastical, shall also be 
Christian. When God spoke to Christ : ** Thou 
art my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased," 
shall we not say that he referred not only to the 
act of obedience in being baptized, or to his pre-in- 
carnate resolution to come to earth, but to his 
faithfulness during thirty years in shop and home, 
carefully performing all duties ? He could attend 
the wedding festivities of several days' duration, 
and assist in furnishing refreshments, thereby 
manifesting forth his glory. Mary was not praised 
merely for sitting at Jesus' feet, nor Martha blamed 
merely for working in the kitchen. Martha needed 
a unifying principle of life. Sitting at Jesus' feet 
in stated prayer may not always be right. Even 
the Joshua who prays before God hears the not al- 
together reassuring words : *' Get thee up ; where- 
fore art thou thus fallen on thy face." Action, not 
words of prayer, were needed. 

Faith can be used in business. When Christ 
was awakened by the fearful disciples his first 
question was not, "Why did you not row?" or, 
Why did you venture out with such a boat ? " but 
** Where is your faith?" It is possible to obey 
such commands as these: ''And whatsoever ye 
do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the 
Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through 
him" (Col. 3 : 17) ; and, ''Whether therefore ye 
eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the 



PRESUPPOSITIONS OF SEX IN RELIGION 69 

glory of God " (i Cor. 10 : 31). It is declared in 
Exodus, the thirty-first chapter, that the workers 
in metals and in stone, and the carvers in wood 
for the tabernacle, worked with the understand- 
ing and inspiration of the Spirit, and Zechariah 
says that '^ in that day '' the words '* Holy to the 
Lord " shall be found upon the bells of the horses 
in the streets as well as upon the miter of the high 
priest, and the pots in the kitchens at Jerusalem 
shall be holy unto the Lord. 

Prof. E. H. Johnson, in **The Highest Life," 
tells of a boy who was often seen to withdraw to 
his closet and friends took it for granted that he 
was very pious. Years afterward, it turned out 
that the boy who had heard that the Christian 
ought to be much in prayer, used often to kneel 
down in a dark clothes-press, half smothered by 
the hanging garments and agonize before God be- 
cause he could not enjoy it. A few years rolled by 
and he found himself away from home and at 
school. The old problem was before him and he 
wondered how he could truly love God and not 
spend all his hours in reading the Bible and at 
prayer. At last his distress became unbearable 
and he told the head master, who only said : ** God 
does not wish you to spend all your time reading 
the Bible and praying. He has placed you in 
school ; he wants you to study.'' And the young 
man was comforted. He had only learned that a 
man can reach God through a book, through man- 



70 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

Ual labor, through social intercourse, as through 
specific prayer. 

As God is in his world, making all holy, so he is 
also in man himself, making every faculty divine. 
There are no religious compartments of the mind 
divided off from others. The faculties by which 
one worships God on Sundays are the same by 
which the daily work is done on Mondays. The 
spiritual nature is simply the mind devoted to spir- 
itual things. Theosophy makes the man composed 
of seven parts, one only of which is the spark of 
Parabrahm, and therefore divine. One modern 
view, sometimes definitely stated, generally tacitly 
assumed, is that through the instincts, impulses, 
and feelings, v/e become aware of God. 

Porphyry stated that during the six years which 
he spent in intimate companionship with Plotinus, 
the latter experienced union with God only four 
times ; that is, communion with God is experienced 
only in such ecstatic and emotional absorptions as 
Charles Kingsley so vividly described in Hypatia, 
whose heroine tries by the subjection of self to be 
wafted away into the arms of Apollo. Theoso- 
phy affirms that after many incarnations human 
beings at last '* enter into the eternal and final all, 
and become an integral part of the great abyss of 
the impersonality called God.'' According to this, 
we shall become most divine in the very extinction 
of that divine image which God has given us to 
develop. 



PRESUPPOSITIONS OF SEX IN RELIGION ^\ 

Buddhism presents a similar ideal in its Nirvana, 
reached by the eightfold path — right view, right 
aspiration, right speech, right conduct, right liveli- 
hood, right effort, right mindfulness, right rapture 
— until the ability to say *' This is I'* and **This 
is mine '* is lost. Against all this, Christianity says 
that we shall be in the fullest possession of God, not 
in some ecstatic experience, but as we act and grow 
naturally in consonance with God's will. 

We meet God, we are coworkers with him, we 
have fellowship with him, not simply through the 
feelings, but through the will and intellect. It is 
not only when we have love, joy, and peace that 
we have God, but when we are studying his world 
or putting forth energy in achievements. The man 
with '* nervous instability'' and '* exalted emo- 
tional sensibility " should not set the standard for 
those who have force and will-power, keen percep- 
tion, and logical powers. A gentleman of Peoria, 
111., told the author that when he was a boy he 
came home to his stepmother shaking with the old- 
fashioned fever and ague. He was met with 
'* Goodness, have you got religion .? " The person 
who seldom has emotion is not less religious than 
the naturally excitable. There is no reason to 
suppose that regularity in Christian experience is 
against God's personal movement in our lives, any 
more than that God is not in the regular laws of 
nature. It makes the ordinary life atheistic to 
recognize God only in the emotions. 



72 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

A man cannot be forced to a life of virtue. We 
need not be told that character is a product of self- 
activity. If a higher type is therefore to be pro- 
duced, the self must be active. It is said that 
hypnotism weakens the will of the hypnotized. 
Certain, at least, that which another forces me to 
do is not my own act. What if we do gain great 
victories over the enemy and endure the thorns of 
life, if we do it by a power not our own ? Not 
until we embody our deeds in ourselves and act 
from an inherent power sustained by God have we 
added to our own character. It is not how much 
we do, but how much we become. That apple 
tree may be beautiful with its green leaves and 
perfectly formed fruit. It is a better specimen 
than one ordinarily sees in nature. It is the prod- 
uct of skill, for it is manufactured, from the painted 
bark to the rosy-tinted fruit. Which would show 
God's power the more, to set up sticks for trees 
and glue leaves to them, or for God to be im- 
manent in the tree until the tree's life shall obtain, 
as it were, a character ? The redness of the rose is 
not superimposed by the sun, but comes from the 
rose's own heart, and yet the redness would not be 
inlaid upon its petals without the sun's assistance. 
We realize our fullest life by supernatural in- 
fluences, but these are naturally mediated. 

Faith itself is concerned more with the intellect 
and will than with the emotions. Faith is the as- 
sent of the intellect and the consent of the heart. 



PRESUPPOSITIONS OF SEX IN RELIGION 73 

It is a choice made upon certain probabilities. The 
man with the withered hand obeys the command 
and raises his hand and by this exercise of the will, 
new strength is given to the arm. The angel came 
to Gideon with the salutation : '* Hail, thou mighty 
man of valor,'* and yet the eleventh chapter of 
Hebrews includes Gideon with the heroes of faith. 
It was when the Spirit of the Lord came upon 
Gideon that he blew the trumpet. Faith is 
courage. 

One thing more can be said about this normal 
human life, that it is a development of one's own 
personality. The church has suffered by a same- 
ness of type, and all are supposed to start the 
same, feel the same, think the same. The busi- 
ness of the church ought to be to treat every con- 
vert as a gardener treats a hybrid, in which the 
plant is studied at every stage and tested with vary- 
ing soils and climates. We are traveling heaven- 
ward, but although all pictured angels look alike, it 
is to be hoped that heaven will not be a dead level 
of eternal sameness. Regeneration, or the com- 
munication of a new life, does not mean that the 
new life of all is the same in quality and quantity. 
Regeneration is the ** origination in man of a holy 
bias or disposition, by virtue of which he begins to 
exercise normally all his spiritual powers." It does 
not change his personality except by the origination 
of this holy bias ; and those personal characteris- 
tics which constitute individuality are, as far as 



74 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

they are moral, but to receive a new impetus by 
regeneration. 

Nature is our instructor. No two roses are alike ; 
every pansy is a fresh study. Like the tree which 
transforms its nutriment into the oak or palm by 
the invisible law of conformity to type, so a person 
grows as he incorporates the right material into his 
nature. The kindergarten has started the educa- 
tional tendency, but now everywhere educators are 
insisting that individuality must be preserved. In 
the kindergarten the child's nature is simply guided 
and obstructions are removed. The purpose is to 
develop what distinguishes each child, every song 
and exercise being chosen with relation to this pur- 
pose. Some one has said that Plato, Milton, Ed- 
wards, Napoleon, and John Howard, possessed to a 
great degree the faculty of imagination. But this, 
united with other peculiar powers of each one's 
mind, made one a philosopher, another a poet, 
another a theologian, another a soldier, and another 
a philanthropist. 

The question may be asked, if all our individu- 
alities are to have a distinct development, how can 
we all reach the same goal of being like Jesus ? 
Dorner beautifully represents humanity by a gap- 
less but ever-growing circle, and just as each point 
in the circle has its own relationship to the center, 
shared by no other point in the whole circumfer- 
ence, so each human being bears a different rela- 
tionship to God. God does not deal with us as 



PRESUPPOSITIONS OF SEX IN RELIGION 75 

the Israelites supposed that Jehovah dealt with 
them as members of an elect race and not as dis- 
tinct persons. Each child in a large family enters 
into a peculiar relation with its father. So each 
one of those who trust in Christ, finds something 
in him that meets his own specific needs. 

Jesus is myriad-sided. A center of relationship 
is to be found in him for all of the mighty circle of 
humanity. In the words of Dr. George Dana 
Boardman, making the last speech at the Chicago 
Parliament of Religions: 'Mesus of Nazareth is 
the universal Homo, the essential Vir, the Son of 
human nature. Blending in himself all races, ages, 
sexes, capacities, temperaments, Jesus is the arche- 
typal man, the ideal hero, the consummate incar- 
nation, the symbol of perfected human nature, the 
sum total of enfolded, fulfilled humanity, the Son 
of mankind. . . Zoroaster was a Persian, Confu- 
cius was a Chinaman, Gautama was an Indian, 
Mohammed was an Arabian, but Jesus is the Son 
of man." 

Mere imitation destroys individuality, but Christ's 
life is creative of a new spirit. Not homogeneity 
we want, but variety in unity. We can all follow 
the same Christ, but preserve what we are as far 
as this is moral and human. The Christian life is 
not a self-effacement ; it is an affirmation of God 
in the life. As such it is the realization of the true 
man in the individual. 

The bearing of the ideas of this chapter on the 



76 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

progress of thought of the whole book is manifest. 
The man as well as the woman is called to live the 
Christian life. Yet he is not asked to be excep- 
tional and eccentric, but to live the normal, natural 
life of a man. He is not adding something incon- 
gruous to his life, but is restoring his life to the 
norm according to which he was originally created. 
He is not less a man, but more of a man, by being 
a Christian. He finds that however busy he is, 
God is to be found in a business transaction as in 
prayer, in fact, that this is prayer ; and in creating 
and in achieving he is coming into actual fellowship 
with God. He learns that all places are holy, all 
money sacred, all men divine, and all men God's. 
He finds too, that God is in him when he uses his 
intellect as when a flood of emotions pours over his 
soul. He becomes aggressive, knowing that God 
surcharges his will with energy. He exercises his 
masculine powers, knowing that these are divine. 
He does not belittle his personality, but believes 
that there is a place for him in the kingdom of God. 
He finds in Christ his perennial friend, perfectly 
adapted to his own nature. He may grant to 
woman that intuition, feeling, and aspiration which 
give her a certain type of religion, and make cer- 
tain religious exercises more natural to her ; but he 
believes that he too has been made religious, that 
he too can come near to God, and companionship 
with Christ can come in thought and volition as in 
emotions. 



CHAPTER VII 
MEN AND THE CHURCH 

THE questionnaire method is often, if not always, 
misleading. It is almost impossible to make 
the examination thorough enough, and cer- 
tainly it is not feasible to expect exact results by a 
compilation of statistics. Oftentimes the very 
suggestion that a correspondent offers is the answer 
all would make if they were sufficiently self-ana- 
lytical, or could give voice to the unobserved trend 
of society. Yet answers from many are valuable 
as they show the development of public opinion ; 
and, in addition, here and there, the conviction of 
an honest mind in the careful consideration of a 
problem, who does not agree with the majority. 

It was mainly with the purpose of observing 
how much the contention of this book had reached 
the consciousness of the people, thereby offering a 
proof of its accuracy, that the author, in three dif- 
ferent pastorates sent out a series of questions, 
being careful to secure returns from professional, 
business, and workingmen, part of whom were 
church-members, and part not. Sometimes the 
questions were sent out by mail, but more often 
were delivered personally. In each case, the male 

77 



78 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

members of the church were enlisted in the can- 
vass. Hundreds of answers were received in each 
city and the work of compilation took weeks. 
Scores of answers, as might be expected, were 
practically worthless. Many answers were only 
repetitions in a different form of the questions, and 
many answers were only begotten of surface judg- 
ments. But, on the whole, the correspondents 
showed that earnest thought had been given to the 
questions presented. Oftentimes there were dozens 
of men who practically said the same thing, thus 
reinforcing the opinion. 

One of these questions was this: '*Why do 
more women than men belong to the church } ** 
The question is not synonymous with that much- 
mooted question as to why more women than men 
attend church, but to the minds of most men, the 
question was a similar one. By some, the differ- 
ence noted in church-membership was thought to 
be due to the different training which women have 
received in the past. *' I do not believe that woman, 
had she been in the past subjected to the same 
influences as man, together with larger educational 
advantages and means of developing intellect, 
would attend church as freely as man." 

In the main, however, the phenomenon is attrib- 
uted to two causes, the difference of environment 
and the difference of nature. Concerning environ- 
ment, man feels — such is his answer — that his 
duties are so confining and exacting, and that he 



MEN AND THE CHURCH 79 

works so hard both mentally and bodily in order 
to gain the necessities of life, that when Sunday 
comes, he naturally takes it as a day of rest, 
and consequently feels no inclination to continue 
his labors by attending church. It is certain, at 
least, that absence from church generally means 
freedom from church-membershio, because the 
man who does not go to church does not give the 
church-worker an opportunity to bring him into 
the church. Even if he does become a church- 
member, he loses the help of church-fellowship 
by his absence. 

The other phase of environment which draws 
men away from the church, is the contact with the 
world of temptation to which a woman is not sub- 
ject. '* In constant public associations, I believe 
men are more exposed to the sledge-hammer blows 
of the adversary and more men go down under 
them/' These temptations are sometimes felt in 
the very struggle for existence, sometimes in the 
club life and political associations, and sometimes 
by contact with more open forms of vice. A man is 
generally honest enough to keep out of the church, 
even though his open excuse is different, when his 
conscience disapproves of any part of his life. 

Many men, also, take note of the difference in the 
early training of boys and girls. Whether this is 
itself due to a mental difference between the sexes, 
no one suggests. But ** the home and church in- 
fluence does not extend over so long a peiiod in 



8o THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

boyhood/' and '* boys are allowed to run at liberty 
while young girls are cared for/' '* The street 
education of boys prevents many young men from 
becoming Christians." *' If fathers took the same 
care of their sons day and night as mothers do with 
their daughters, there would be many more sons in 
early life converted to God." 

By far the larger number, however, refer the dif- 
ference in church-membership between the man and 
woman to natural variation of mind and character, 
though the differences stated are almost multiform. 
Men are sure that women both love and want to be 
loved, and since religion is concerned most with love, 
women are religious. ** The church is the casket of 
God's memorial love." There are, in addition, 
many more characteristics of a woman's nature pre- 
disposing her to the church. She is ''more sym- 
pathetic," ''more impressible," "sentimental," 
" superstitious," " sensitive," " desires to talk and 
hear talk," and one deacon writes : " They are more 
inquisitive, like to see and be seen, are fond of dress, 
and thus are attracted to the places where ladies 
congregate in houses of worship, and are thus 
brought under the influence of religion." 

Men, on the other side, are less erriotional, more 
intellectual, philosophical, and therefore skeptical. 
Yet this difference in mental and emotional make- 
up may be an indication of woman's superiority. 
"Women yield more readily to emotions and 
promptings that are of deeper birth than reason, 



MEN AND THE CHURCH 8l 

and that direct the reasoning faculties. They do 
not make the mistake in believing only that which 
can be verified by demonstration or experience/' 

A clear distinction between morality and religion 
is not made by every observer, and yet all recog- 
nize that the moral person has less to contend with 
in living the Christian life. Most men feel, even 
though they know that a man is subject to more 
temptations, that a woman is naturally more moral 
than man. The sense of duty may make a woman 
attend church, where a man is not so influenced. 
A woman more naturally inclines toward the good 
and pure. On this point one writes at length : 

A sense of duty rests more lightly on man than on woman, 
and consequently if men are to be attracted to church it must 
be by reason of interest rather than duty, and the interest, of 
course, must be of that nature which excites their attention. 
The average man who is not a Christian will not go to church 
unless he sees practical advantage in so doing. If he can be 
made to see that his condition in life will be improved by giv- 
ing regard to spiritual things, he will attend church. Com- 
monly speaking, he looks upon spiritual birth or growth as 
something not at all essential to everyday life, acquaintance 
with which would very likely trouble his conscience and afford 
no return for his mental disturbance. 

Another reason why a man is not interested in 

the church is because the church does not present 

to him a sufficiently strong motive for the use of 

his energy. Church work in the majority of 

churches is not mapped out on sufficiently broad 

lines to provide work for boys and young men, and 
F 



82 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

especially with the greatest expression outward 
toward the world, and not inward toward the mem- 
bers. Men believe in the practical rather than the 
sentimental. When men are given something 
worth their endeavor to undertake, they respond 
as soldiers to the call of battle. 

One correspondent thinks that if the preachers 
were women, the present condition might not exist. 
'' It is woman's nature to look up to, be influenced 
and led by man.'' One man has the courage to 
tell the preachers what he thinks they are doing 
and says : '* The pulpit has used the gospel to ap- 
peal to the weakness of the race rather than to its 
manhood. Women and children are susceptible to 
emotional appeals." 

Another question directed to the men was : ''What 
kind of a sermon do men like ? " Natural courtesy 
caused this question many times to be unanswered. 
By far the largest number emphasize some phase of 
plain, practical, everyday topics, ''right to the 
point," "without varnish," "sensible," "spoken 
to the hearers, not over them," " simple and direct 
in expression, eliminating all preludes and inter- 
ludes," "short, pithy, and to the point," "terse, 
lively, anecdotal, genial." The Golden Rule is to 
be presented, and selfishness, which is at the bot- 
tom of nearly every evil, is to be rooted out. The 
minister is to preach on " Life : how to live ; the 
art of living. Character : its formation and 
growth ; its perfection. Truth: its beauty, util- 



MEN AND THE CHURCH 83 

ity, and satisfactoriness. The sweetest, purest, 
ennobling thoughts that will freshen the mind and 
heart, and arouse an ambition for purer, better 
lives in all of us." The sermons should be *' con- 
structive, positive, helpful, with no abuse ; that do 
not tell them how bad they are, but of what they 
are capable.*' 

Many advise ministers to leave dogma out of their 
sermons. ** Dogmatism is the mother of doubt." 
Yet a moderate amount of theory may be allowed, 
but the sermons must have liberal views, be free 
from intellectual density, and not deal with secta- 
rian questions. Some distinctly repudiate both the 
political and sensational together with the scien- 
tific sermon ; others want sermons on current 
topics. All insist that the sermons must be fresh 
and up-to-date, not the same sermons that the 
minister may have written when at school or in 
former years. 

It may be readily accepted that the regular an- 
swer of the earnest church-member is that he de- 
sires religious subjects and generally with little 
reference to secular matters. The Bible is a store- 
house of sermon subjects, and every audience likes 
to hear the minister ''dig out the meaning of the 
word and see just how we can best use it and apply 
it to-day." Every sermon should start and end 
with Jesus Christ and him crucified, Christ, who 
was, and is, and is to come. 

Such is man's judgment upon his own relation- 



84 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

ship to the church, and it is far more true than the 
correspondents in general realized, because as indi- 
viduals they did not have the opportunity of com- 
paring answer with answer. The appeal they make 
is for a masculine religion and a masculine church 
service. It makes little difference how man ought 
to relate himself to the church ; the fact is, he does 
not become an active member, and the reason may 
be in his environment or in his nature, presumably 
both. One reason indeed, may be but the counter- 
part of the other. If a man's business and church 
mutually exclude each other, it is not always the 
fault of the business. Perhaps religion has not 
been made broad enough to include the business. 
Religion has demanded church attendance, prayer, 
and Bible reading, but not always the touch of God 
in the daily vocation. Bushnell declared that what 
we needed to-day was the Christianization of the 
money-power. That is more true now than in his 
day, but we need far more the Christianization of 
all business. It is possible to worship God in a 
counting-room and praise him in a factory. Re- 
ligion and secular work must not be divorced. 

Suppose that there is severe temptation ? Do 
soldiers want only a demoralizing fort-life ? Presi- 
dent Roosevelt wisely said in regard to the Spanish- 
American war, that he felt that a heavier load, a 
considerably heavier load, was put on those soldiers 
who were not ordered to the front ; and that in 
some promotions in the regular army, he promoted 



MEN AND THE CHURCH 85 

certain men who, to their bitter regret, had stayed 
in office work instead of going, as they so desired, to 
the field. Their superiors felt that damage would 
come to the interests of the army as a whole if 
they did not stay. The Japanese won the admira- 
tion of the world at once when they were found 
willing to fight and even die if need be. The rec- 
ords of Port Arthur will go down in history be- 
cause men dared run any risk for their country. 
Men can fight if they are called to fight and the goal 
is made important enough. It is true that fathers 
have been derelict in regard to their boys, but it is 
quite time to acknowledge that a boy can play as a 
Christian, study as a Christian, work as a Chris- 
tian. When his chivalrous nature is appealed to, 
when he exerts strength for right and contends for 
justice, when he is bound that his side shall win, let 
him know that these are as much Christian impulses, 
or impulses that can be turned Christward, as the 
love, trust, and passiveness of a tamer character. 

The church is or should be the home of love ; 
but it is something more. It is a factory to turn 
out products for a modern civilization ; it is a 
laboratory in which an expert examination is made 
of soul life ; it is an arsenal where are found all 
sorts of armor for warfare ; it is a foundry where 
is forged the armor for defense ; it is a fort from 
which the soldiers sally forth to victory. Why 
should the church life be known only by its mo- 
ments of rest ? Why should the soft playing of 



86 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

'* Home, Sweet Home '' be thought more appropri- 
ate for the Christian soldier than ** Rally Round 
the Flag '' ? Let some rugged thought be presented, 
some military discipline be used, some martial music 
be played. The good lover is the good hater, and 
hate means opposition. 

There are needed in the church both a Christian 
thought and a Christian activity expressive of its 
virility. Oftentimes more is expected of the poor 
minister than he really can perform. One sympa- 
thizes with Richard Fuller as he says : *M do more 
visiting than the busiest physician in my town ; I 
do more public speaking than a lawyer in full prac- 
tice, and more study than the most diligent profes- 
sor ; and besides am at the beck and call of every 
man, woman, and child in my community, whether 
they have a claim on my time or not.'' Yet it 
ought to be granted that with many ministers the 
same amount of time spent in downright up-to-date 
thinking, with less search for illustrations, less at- 
tempt at adornment, and more attention to simplic- 
ity and perspicuity would give better results. 

When Mr. Edward Bok who, ten years ago, 
sounded such a blast on ** The Young Man and the 
Church,'' that thousands of ministers and editors 
sprang to the defense, repeated his challenge last 
year, it was practically with the same arguments. 
The young men themselves complain, according to 
Mr. Bok, that they do not get enough out of the 
sermons ; they are all theory, words. The minis- 



MEN AND THE CHURCH 87 

ter doesn't know men, and gives himself too much 
to mere cloister study. There is no vitality in the 
service. *' The message that is delivered Sunday 
after Sunday from the average pulpit is vapid and 
meaningless to the man of affairs of to-day." All 
this is severe, probably too much so. hi no other 
place but a school would there congregate a body 
of people twice or more a week throughout a year 
to hear the same speaker, and when it does occur 
elsewhere, it is only with a small select gathering 
and the teacher is not in addition a visitor, pastor, 
and business manager. 

Christ did not preach directly on either politics 
or industry. He refused to say whether tribute 
should be paid to Caesar ; but he did declare at the 
same time that if there was an obligation to gov- 
ernment it should be met. He would not be a judge 
over an estate ; but at the same time he warned the 
plaintiff of covetousness. He did not hesitate to un- 
cover the sefishness and greed and hypocrisy of the 
Pharisees or to call Herod Antipas a fox. He could 
and did strike at dishonesty, lust, and crime without 
the slightest hesitation. And yet he was masterful 
in thought. He did promulgate dogma, if by dogma 
we understand the statement of truth and of gen- 
eral principles under which specific instances may 
be classified. He was a thinker and an educator, 
and no meaningless sentences ever escaped his lips 
nor a statement which was extraneous or contra- 
dictory to his complete system of thought. 



88 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

Men do not find enough to do in the church of 
that which requires skill and courage. There are 
too many trivialities forced upon them, too many 
offices whose duties are mere play. There is too 
great a contrast between the strenuous business 
life to which they are accustomed and the lifeless 
committee work upon petty things to which they are 
invited. Institutional church work is an invaluable 
aid to the church in winning the men. Here there 
is a recognition of the whole man, of his desire to 
achieve, of his love of fellowship. But even insti- 
tutional work is not indispensable to success among 
men. A church service where strong, manly ser- 
mons are preached and songs sung which are full of 
vigor and vim ; a Sunday-school where young men 
are aided in the competition of thought ; a prayer- 
meeting that is not filled with platitudes and out- 
worn phrases ; a campaign for men managed 
systematically by men with as much care as a busi- 
ness canvass — these are the means of making a 
virile church. 



CHAPTER VIII 
MEN AND THE LODGE 

TO examine a man's life outside of the church 
is to discover his needs and his tendencies. 
Two main questions in the series referred to 
in the preceding chapter were made to cover this 
field, allowing to each correspondent the freedom 
of expression as new ideas were suggested to him. 
The first question was, *' Why do many men prefer 
the lodge to the church?'' The second was, *Ms 
it difficult for a professional, business, or working 
man to live a Christian life, and why? " To this 
was added a third question, '* Other things being 
equal, which would you prefer to employ, a Chris- 
tian or a non-Christian? " To the two main ques- 
tions, at least, almost every man approached had a 
ready answer. Whether or not all answers were 
to be taken seriously matters little, providing the 
men were sincere in their answers, and the author 
believes that they were. 

In regard to the first question, '* Why do many 
men prefer the lodge to the church? " the answers 
were multiform. Some think that the lodges are 
not well patronized except on banquet nights; some, 
that the lodge and church are not competitors, as 

89 



90 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

each has its own field ; some, that the best lodge- 
members are the best church-members. Many 
appeal for co-operation on the ground that they are 
practically engaged in the same work. The lodge 
is founded upon the same Bible as is the church, 
and endeavors to carry out the instructions con- 
tained therein. It has a broad field in which to 
labor, for a vast proportion of the membership is 
without the pale of the church. Visiting the sick, 
relieving the distressed, burying the dead, and edu- 
cating the orphans, is an imperative duty enjoined 
upon the lodges, and it is faithfully carried out. 
While the churches may be willing to do all this, it 
is not possible, for their expenses in other directions 
prevent it. 

Some answer the question by saying that the 
lodge is a place of enjoyment and recreation, and 
has a greater variety of interests than the church. 
The greater number, however, refer to some ele- 
ment of mutual help secured in the lodge. A few 
plainly declare that lodge-members promise to favor 
fellow-members, other things being equal. Gen- 
erally reference is made to the assistance given in 
sickness, either by a sick benefit or the furnishing 
of a nurse ; and, in the event of death, a death 
benefit or the face value of a policy paid to the 
family. This is especially to be commended, be- 
cause members receive help as a matter of right and 
not of charity. All lodges do not have insurance 
features, but all aim to relieve a brother in distress. 



MEN AND THE LODGE 9I 

The lodge also becomes the place of sociability 
and fellowship, so whole-souled that many men 
think that the church suffers grievously by the 
comparison. One correspondent, and only one, 
himself a lodge-member, says that ''friendship, 
fellowship, or charity, which must be held together 
or prompted by an oath-bound obligation is poor 
stuff at the best and cold." Many, of course, 
justify the difference by declaring that they go to 
church for religion. 

Many prefer the lodge because it gives them the 
freedom and opportunity for discussion. At church 
they must listen to the preacher without the oppor- 
tunity of putting in either questions or answers. 
Opportunity is afforded in the lodge for discussing, 
and hearing intelligently discussed, topics of close 
interest to men, both in a business and a social 
way. The topics are of interest to them for the 
immediate future, while at church they are taught 
to look into an indefinite and uncertain future. 

Almost every lodge-member also feels the impor- 
tance of position and the gradation of offices in the 
lodge. All officers are elected at stated intervals, 
and each member has the chance for the honors of 
any office. Each office is honored with sufficient 
dignity and responsibility to make it a coveted prize 
for the member. In the church, for most men, there 
is no office, and they are expected to be quiet and 
receive instruction ; or, if there is an office, it is of 
no importance and burdened with trifling duties. 



92 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

Many thoughtful men discuss the lodges from the 
moral and religious side, and frankly say that they 
offer to their members a real moral and religious 
standard. They require of them belief in a Supreme 
Being, and many emphasize the Bible as a guide- 
book, and all make prayer an important part of 
their service. Many men, generally members of 
no lodge, regard the lodge as anti-Christian, if not 
irreligious ; most, however, say that the lodge does 
not assume to be a substitute for the church. 
''When this is true, it is because some men quiet 
their conscience with respect to religious duty by 
substituting relations with some body, membership 
with which usually carries with it a sort of public 
certificate of morality or respectability.'' '' Lodges 
and fraternities wear a large moral cloak. The 
corner-stone of their foundation is the moral law. 
The freedom of the interpretation of the law attracts 
and the morality of it soothes their slumbering 
consciences.'' ''With many, lodges are looked 
upon as a kind of respectable support against 
moral weakness ; with others they form an easy 
method of patronizing morality and expressing the 
liberty to recross the line when business success 
demands it, while the moral rule of the church 
they regard as inexorable." "There is no ques- 
tion asked as to what a man believes or does not 
believe." "A lodge imposes no dogma, yet is made 
comprehensive enough to satisfy all demands." 

In every reason given by men why many men 



MEN AND THE LODGE 93 

prefer the lodge to the church, can be seen a cor- 
responding duty of the church. It is true that that 
organization runs the risk of rapid deterioration that 
makes pleasure the main object ; but, on the other 
hand, recreation is a legitimate expression of the 
religious life. It is scarcely a high ideal for the 
church to say that since people will secure social 
recreation anyway, the church will be wise in fur- 
nishing it. Rather should the church aim to see 
the need of the whole man, the social nature as 
well, and then by the social life within the church 
to set a standard for all social life. He is indeed a 
melancholy example of the human race, as F. 
Hopkinson Smith says, who, as a highly successful 
American business man, opens his daily life with 
his office key and closes it with a letter for the late 
mail. The church must not admit enjoyment as a 
makeshift to win support, but must see that Christ 
can be served at the proper time in a church social 
or a young men's game-room as at a prayer-meet- 
ing. Men of business need and should have pleas- 
ure and recreation, and the lodge should not need 
to supplant the church as far as legitimate amuse- 
ment is concerned. 

A larger recognition of the need of mutual help 
should certainly be given in the church. However, 
the special pleader for the lodge must not forget 
that every lodge-member pays for what he receives. 
Every church, in a quiet, unostentatious way, is 
helping many, and in the large city congregations, 



94 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

is paying out thousands of dollars a year for char- 
ity, while being at the same time the prey of every 
indigent person in the community. The man who 
is in health, and who is a good citizen in the com- 
munity, is the only one in general who is admitted 
to the lodge. Let him cease paying his dues, unless 
he is sick or in some severe reverse, and his claim 
to benefits also ceases at once. The church is a 
public crib for all philanthropic, charitable, and 
missionary organizations, and thousands of church- 
members give money freely with sacrifice, only to 
be publicly criticized for their generosity. Still, it 
must be said again, church-members should more 
clearly recognize the need of mutual help, and 
thus make the prospective member feel that if once 
he enters the church there are many to stand by 
him and help him to a strong, manly life. 

The church is under a great disadvantage in the 
matter of sociability. Each member feels that he 
is not a representative church-member and has no 
right to take the initiative in a large congregation. 
Visitors are coming and going, and he knows not 
always who are members. Even if he does, he 
does not want to be officious. A lodge is different. 
The crowd is never present except at the occasional 
open meeting, and then by special invitation. The 
thirty or forty at the usual business meeting know 
one another well. There are no subsidiary organ- 
izations meeting at different occasions, the members 
of which are unacquainted with each other. Still, 



MEN AND THE LODGE 95 

the church is not all that it should be. Men need 
fellowship. They expect it in the church. Men 
go in droves, and somewhere in the church whose 
work is adapted to men there should be an oppor- 
tunity among men for the expression of good fel- 
lowship. Something like the reputed coat of arms 
of Thomas Hood should hang up over every church 
door — a hand, and underneath the words, ''When 
taken, to be well shaken. *' 

A man loves to discuss questions of interest. He 
is not ready, not at least in America, to accept re- 
ligious any more than he is political opinions ready- 
made. There are certain channels in which church 
thought must stay, and oftentimes it becomes stag- 
nant and lifeless by its very sluggishness. A man 
should be given a large share in the interpretation 
of truth and its application to life, and not be looked 
upon with manifest disquietude because his views 
are original. He should be heard in the public 
meetings of the church, and opportunity be given 
to the young business man to test his theory by 
actual experiment. There should be given him in 
separate organizations an opportunity to discuss all 
the great moral and religious questions which affect 
the welfare of church and society. 

Men want to do something. The church offices 
seem to be few and oftentimes these are monopo- 
lized. The Young Men's Christian Association, 
with its committee work, has created positions for 
men, all bearing responsibility. A church should 



96 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

be organized like a business establishment, with a 
gradation of office and a placing of responsibility, 
allowing to each a certain initiative for the sake 
of fresh plans. Give the men something large 
enough and important enough, and they will do 
it. It belittles their manhood to make them turn 
from some weighty business transaction to a petty 
religious affair. 

By far the most serious question concerning the 
lodge is its relationship to religion. It is not an ob- 
jection to the lodge that it does not teach the Trinity, 
any more than it is an objection against the public 
school. The Bible passage, *' Be not unequally 
yoked together with unbelievers,'' applies no more 
to the lodge than it does to a business concern 
where a Christian is employed by a non-Christian. 
If the lodge becomes a real rival to the church, it 
does it in one of three ways : First, the lodge may 
give the suggestion that salvation depends upon 
good works. It teaches a high grade of morality, 
the statics but not the dynamics of life. The 
thought may be in many a member's mind, ^'This 
do, and thou shalt live," which is a repetition of the 
legality repudiated by Paul. 

Secondly, the lodge with its ritual and rules may 
be thought to satisfy all the wants of the soul, and 
especially in the need of worship. This claim has 
been made, and more than once. Thirdly, there is 
the explicit teaching that oftentimes justifies the 
assumption that membership in a lodge is a sure 



MEN AND THE LODGE 97 

guarantee of membership in the grand lodge above. 
The burial service of every lodge assumes as a 
matter of course a safe entrance on the part of the 
deceased into the abode of happiness and peace 
irrespective of his relationship to Christ. It is a 
delicate matter to treat, and every minister knows 
that at times, even on the ground of silence if no 
other, he is subject to the same criticism as he con- 
ducts the funeral service of a moral non-Christian. 

The religious element of the lodge, so universally 
conceded an important place in prayer, ritual, burial 
service, and the necessity of believing in a Supreme 
Being, at least refutes the assumption that man 
does not care for religion. His religion may be un- 
trammeled by minute particularizations of thought, 
but he wants a God above whose providential acts 
can be depended upon. He wants some form of 
worship which, without too great limitation, can be 
the medium of his approach to God. He wants a 
prayer that not only is a mode of fellowship with 
God, but a method of appeal for help. He may be 
engaged in a desperate struggle for existence, but 
he does not consign in thought the soul of a fellow- 
traveler to the dust, but wants a continuation of 
the best of earth's fellowship in a better and hap- 
pier abode above. 

This survey of the attractions and advantages 

of the lodge shows that in all essential particulars 

the church can satisfy the legitimate demands of a 

man's religious nature. If there is any doubt any- 
G . 



q8 the masculine in religion 

where about its ability to do so, it is in the depart- 
ment of mutual help. Insurance is not an essen- 
tial feature of a lodge, nor could it be introduced 
with profit into the church organization ; but in both 
a better spirit of helpfulness and a more practical 
way of manifesting such a spirit, could be gained. 
The disciples were not only sent out to preach the 
gospel, but to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, 
raise the dead, cast out devils. Christ was anointed 
not only to preach the gospel to the poor, but to 
heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to 
the captives, the recovery of sight to the blind, to 
set at liberty them that are bruised ; and John de- 
clares that we too are the anointed ones, and so our 
service cannot be far different from Christ's. 

Christ's miracles were proofs of his power, and 
authenticated him as a messenger of truth, but this 
was not the main reason for their display. They 
were also ** acted parables,'' ** signs " of a spiritual 
power and a spiritual effect ; but this was not the 
chief reason that they were enacted. Primarily, 
they were the natural expression of Christ's com- 
passion for a suffering humanity. He who could 
perform miracles in case of need, and did not, cer- 
tainly did not love. We may not be able to perform 
miracles, but the same spirit may be in us, and there 
is the same need as of yore. **Pure religion and 
undefiled before our God and Father is this, to visit 
the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to 
keep one's self unspotted from the world." 



MEN AND THE LODGE Q9 

If the lodge satisfies men, the church can do it. 
It can be a home of enjoyment, a means of fellow- 
ship and sociability, a place of activity, discussion, 
and responsibility, a satisfaction to the religious 
nature, far better than the lodge. In addition it 
has the advantage of being the very organization 
founded by Christ himself ; that organization which, 
with the family and nation, is a main agency for 
bringing in the kingdom of God. Let the church 
and men tie to each other. They need each other, 
and Christ needs both. 

LOfC, 



CHAPTER IX 

MEN AND BUSINESS 

'*TS it difficult for the professional, business, or 
I working man to live a Christian life, and 
why ? '' Such was a second question sent 
out to the various correspondents. There is an 
advantage in answering this question, partly be- 
cause it shows what kind of a religion a man needs, 
and partly because it reveals the chasm in most 
men's minds between business and the customary 
display of the religious life. The men who declare 
that ** religion has no place in a man's business ; 
sterling integrity and honor there," have too 
strictly separated not only morality and religion, 
but the religion of the church and the religion of 
business. 

Many men do not find that it is more difificult for 
business men to live a Christian life than any other 
class of persons. ** When we would do good, evil 
is always present.'' Dozens of men, however, 
frankly say, *' Yes " ; but the reason stated varies 
with the personality of the writer and the hardships 
of his business. Many men at least write, even 
though they do not practise the rule, that they 
''must get the best of the other fellow and do it 

lOO 



MEN AND BUSINESS lOI 

first." In some lines of business 'M believe it is 
practically impossible to lead a Christian life and 
make a success of business/' ** Competition is 
fierce ; profits are small ; associates cheat as well 
as competitors.'' ** The real Christian falls an easy 
prey to myriad sharks." ** To associate with non- 
Christians makes the temptation to meet them with 
their own weapons." The condition, to the minds 
of many, is not complimentary to a large per cent. 
of the Christian people who have dealings with 
business men. ** Many church people are unwilling 
to give a business man a fair chance to make a 
profit, and are too close in their bargains." 

Outside of temptation to yield to dishonesty, 
many see that the Christian's heart is hardened 
by business. " It is my experience that it would 
not be difficult for a man to lead a Christian life if 
the Golden Rule — * Do unto others as you would be 
done by ' — were universally observed ; as it is very 
hard to be charitable toward a person whom you 
know is scheming and planning to take an unfair 
advantage of you at every turn, and that is some- 
thing every business man in New York has to con- 
tend with." 

Another says that '* Contact with the business 
world deadens their spirituality and dims the vision 
of Christ, and too honest to play the hypocrite, 
and too grasping and near-sighted to make the 
sacrifices, they prefer to remain without." A man 
too, if he succeeds against the heavy competition 



102 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

of to-day, must devote his whole time, energy, 
thought, and effort to that business. Success 
brings men into contact with the outside world, 
with men struggling like themselves, with thoughts 
like their thoughts, and in time the average man, 
unconsciously perhaps, takes for his motto, '* Suf- 
ficient unto the day (this life) is the evil (or good) 
thereof/' He forms a habit early, and that habit 
grows stronger as he grows older, until he forgets 
or at least puts off the idea of its being his duty to 
think and study the questions relating to his Maker 
and his fellow-men. 

The working-man, also, has his difficulties in living 
a Christian life. Sometimes it is unscrupulous em- 
ployers who make it difficult ; sometimes it is be- 
cause he does not find himself welcome in the 
church ; sometimes it is because he has no time 
for anything but his machine. One may feel 
thankful that the question of dishonesty does not 
here seem to form an important difficulty, for none 
of the correspondents mention this temptation, 
although several speak of the profane language 
which many working-men must constantly hear. 
It would seem, however, that there is a disposition 
on the part of working-men as well as the business 
men to get something for nothing. 

Scores, on the other side, say emphatically, *' No, 
it is not difficult for a professional, business, or 
working-man to live a Christian life," although 
generally the answer is made with some qualifica- 



MEN AND BUSINESS IO3 

tion. ''The Christian people in their business 
relations do show their appreciation of the upright 
man.'* *Mt is, but that difficulty lessens as one 
grows in the Christian life and learns the fact, 
hard indeed to learn, that the capital of strict un- 
swerving Christian integrity, known to be such, 
pays in the aggregate better and surer for this 
world and the next/' *Mt is the nominal Chris- 
tian who gets into hot water all the time." '* It is 
difficult because of the failure of most men to real- 
ize that steady, honest solidity of purpose is con- 
ducive to peace of mind ; that a life harassed by 
the fear of being found out, is intensest misery ; 
that one may not be dishonest because his neigh- 
bor is ; that pure happiness is only attained by 
pure thoughts, upright conduct, and the conscious- 
ness of living in every way a clean life." 

To the subsidiary question asked, '' Which would 
you prefer to employ, other things being equal, a 
Christian or a non-Christian ? " as might have 
been expected, most of the answers were in favor 
of the Christian employee. Perhaps the excep- 
tions, for this reason, are the more worthy of 
consideration as implying independent thought. 
'' Does the Christian here mean the church-mem- 
ber, or one who is like Christ ? The two terms 
are certainly not synonymous. A man of sense, 
honor, and correctness of habit, should certainly 
make the best employee." 

A unique answer is the one made by an employer 



104 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

in a large factory, who says he prefers non-Chris- 
tians, ** because they are generally of greater force 
of character; they do not lose sight of earthly 
duties by keeping their minds fixed on the future 
life. I find more charity among non-Christians 
than among the so-called Christians.'' It is also 
an employer who says, *' It should be an easy 
matter for a working-man to lead a Christian life. 
He goes in the morning to his work, performs it 
carefully, and returns to his family to spend a 
pleasant evening free from care. He should read 
the life of Jesus who placed his divine approval on 
honest labor." Most working-men probably do not 
find their life quite so roseate. 

These difficulties which seem to prevent many 
men from becoming and being Christians, only 
reveal again the need of a masculine type of re- 
ligion for all business, professional, and working- 
men. To be a Christian is not simply to be a 
church-member, though all Christians will seek to 
connect themselves with other Christians ; nor is it 
to accept so many doctrines, though there will be 
right belief as well as right conduct ; nor is it 
simply to attend religious meetings, engaging in 
the services according to one's ability, although 
this will be one phase of the Christian life. The 
man must prepare himself for a battle, and that 
battle in behalf of the noblest principles. The 
Christian life includes right conduct — honesty, in- 
tegrity, purity, charity. We are not compelled to 



MEN AND BUSINESS 105 

live. Man need not live by bread alone, but he 
should live by every word that proceeds out of the 
mouth of God. We must have eternal life ; it is 
not necessary to have temporal life. A man needs 
the bread of life, but he can spare the earthly 
bread. Will he have to die ? Let him die. A 
few deaths for religious principles would be the 
seed for hundreds of new converts. Men do not 
shirk sacrifice in behalf of great ideas. Let us 
have a masculine religion. 

That a healthful business world demands honesty 
does not belong to Christianity as such. Every 
man^s conscience. Christian or not, makes for up- 
rightness. That it is hard to be honest is not an 
objection against the Christian life per se. If Christ 
had never come, if the church did not exist, there 
would still be some requirements of honesty. To 
be a true man needs courage, and to have courage 
is to be masculine. It is no objection to Chris- 
tianity that it demands righteousness ; rather does 
it aid a man by not only presenting a high ideal, 
but giving him power to reach that ideal. If the 
man has made up his mind to be a man, and noth- 
ing but a man, the Christian life is the easiest way 
of realizing his ambition. 

There is also to be considered that other reason 
that makes it difficult for the man of the world to 
live a Christian life, and that is, that business is 
too absorbing. A man's work forms for him a 
certain mood. The big realities of '* money, 



I06 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

notoriety, and pain '' are before him. There is 
no opportunity for introspection and meditation. 
Faith, as the assurance of things hoped for, a con- 
viction of things not seen, seems least possible in 
the midst of the real world of stocks and bonds, 
personal and real property, store and office, factory 
and farm. 

Absorption in business ! May not a man be 
completely absorbed in business and still be the 
most consistent Christian ? What in point of fact 
is the essence of religion that a man should decide 
that absorption in business and a Christian faith 
are incompatible ? The Christian's faith is con- 
cerned with all daily activity whether it seems to 
have a moral quality or not. A man's vocation is 
the field of Christian activity. 

In laborer's ballad oft more piety 
God finds than in Te Deum's melody. 

The new Jerusalem is coming down out of 
heaven, and it is the Christian's privilege of mak- 
ing a new Jerusalem out of London, or Paris, or 
New York. Phillips Brooks well declared that the 
effective and the receptive life are one. 

Business is the natural expression of religion. 
It is as natural to be religious as it is to breathe. 
To leave Christ out of a man's soul is like living 
with a weak heart. It should seem to us absurd 
that a man should say that he has no time for re- 
ligion. *Mt is as if the engine had said it had no 



MEN AND BUSINESS 107 

room for steam. It is as if the tree had said it had 
no room for the sap. It is as if the ocean had said 
that it had no room for the tide. It is as if the 
man said he had no room for his soul. It is as if 
life said that it had no time to live, when it is life. 
It is not something that is added to life, it is life. 
. . . Life is the thing we seek, and man finds it in 
the fulfilment of his life by Jesus Christ.'' 

How we have abused that word ** world.'' We 
have made it synonymous with three or four great 
public amusements and supposed that we were far 
away from the world because we did not care for 
any of them. The world is **the aggregate of 
things earthly ; the whole circle of earthly goods, 
endowments, riches, advantages, pleasures, etc., 
which although hollow, frail, and fleeting, stir de- 
sire, seduce from God, and are obstacles to the 
cause of Christ." To this world, which is to pass 
away, we must be crucified. Yet it is possible, 
and in fact our duty, to use the world, though not 
to use it to the full, for the fashion of this world 
passes away. 

Let the man state his Christian life in business 
in the threefold biblical way. First, let it be stated 
in terms of God's will. Christ said : *' Lo, I come, 
to do thy will, O God." In Samaria he told his 
disciples that his meat was to do the will of his 
Father, seemingly remembering that bitter experi- 
ence of only nine months before, when he said to 
Satan: **Man shall not live by bread alone, but 



I08 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth 
of God/' We are to seek first the kingdom of 
God and his righteousness. *Mf my right hand 
slacked," said Antonio Stradivari, *M should rob 
God ; for while God is fullest good, he cannot 
make the violins of Antonio Stradivari without 
Antonio/' 

The Christian life can also be stated in terms of 
Christ's life. **As the Father hath sent me, so 
send I you," gives us the same mission as that of 
Jesus. We are told to follow him, and he prayed, 
not because he was trying to give us an example, 
but because he needed to pray ; he cast out demons 
by the Spirit of God, as we also must. Christ 
found that he could be well-pleasing to the Father 
and work at a carpenter's bench to earn a liveli- 
hood for himself and his family, and during the 
same days to increase in favor with God. Joseph 
Maier, who represented the character of Christ at 
the Oberammergau Passion Play for three succes- 
sive decades, declared : *' It is not only the greatest 
honor of my life to represent the character of 
Christ, but it is for me the most solemn of religious 
duties." . '* In his name " means in his spirit, with 
his aim. All of life's activities can be done equally 
in his name, whether it is to eat or to pray, to work 
in the store or in the church. 

The same principle can also be expressed by our 
relation to the Holy Spirit. The word ''Christ" 
means the anointed one. Christ in the first 



MEN AND BUSINESS 109 

sermon in Galilee given in his own home church, 
declared that the Spirit of the Lord had anointed 
him, evidently recalling the event that occurred 
two months before, when the Spirit had descended 
upon him. But John declares that we also have 
an anointing which abides upon us. We too are 
messiahs, God's anointed ones, under the direction 
and power of the Holy Spirit ; and this anointing 
does not come and go according to the locality in 
which a man is placed. He is Spirit-filled at busi- 
ness as when at church. 

After all, what Christ wants is the man as he is, 
through whom he is to shine out to the world. 
Religious duties are not ends in themselves. When 
John Lewis Shuck, who laid the foundations of the 
work of the Southern Baptist Convention in south- 
ern and central China, was a young man, he 
attended a missionary meeting. A fervent appeal 
was made and the plates came in heaped with 
bank-notes, silver, and even gold. But there was 
a card. An usher remembered who put it in. It 
simply said, *' Myself.'' It was another example 
of '* Silver and gold have I none, but such as I 
have give I thee." God wants the man's self 
back of his business, and then the business will be 
but the prism by which God's white light of love, 
holiness, and truth shall be refracted into the rain- 
bow colors of Christian graces. 



CHAPTER X 
THE MANLINESS OF CHRIST 

IT was years ago that Thomas Hughes received 
a communication from the north of England, 
where at the time had occurred many savage 
assaults and crimes of violence, in regard to the 
formation of a new Christian organization. The 
promoters felt that many Christian young men of 
the time had separated themselves from the or- 
dinary habits and life of young men, and had set 
before themselves a wrong standard, which taught, 
not that they were to live in the world and subdue 
it to their Master, but were to withdraw from it as 
much as possible. Therefore they wanted this new 
** Christian Guild" founded on quite other prin- 
ciples. They wanted to revive by their organiza- 
tion muscular Christianity, in which members must 
be first of all Christian, but selected as far as possi- 
ble for some act of physical courage or prowess. 
It was hoped that branches of the parent organiza- 
tion might attract the vigorous young men of each 
district, and so give a higher tone to the sports and 
occupations of young Englishmen. 

Thomas Hughes did not see his way clear to 
identify himself with the proposed organization, 
no 



THE MANLINESS OF CHRIST III 

but he began to engage in a new study of the life 
of Christ, the result of which is to be found in his 
*' Manliness of Jesus/' which has not to-day, for 
some reason, the wide reading that it deserves. 
Not on the same subject, but yet rich in material 
on the topic, derived from an original investigation 
of the Gospels, is Robert E. Speer's *'The Man 
Christ Jesus/' Still the question is comparatively 
untouched. It was not, then, with presuppositions 
that scores of correspondents answered the some- 
what daring question sent to them : 'Ms the person 
of Christ attractive to men ? " 

To the question, there was a quite general affirma- 
tive answer. This unanimity of opinion may possi- 
bly have been caused by the general condition of 
public opinion, much the same as when many peo- 
ple profess an admiration for music because it is 
supposed not to be good form to dislike it. Here, 
the stray answers count most. 

''Yes," is the answer; "to all fair-minded men." 
"Way above his age in all that pertains to a sub- 
lime man." "Believers and non-believers com- 
mend him." " Yes, as a worker, server, and hero." 
" I never found any one who did not wish he was 
as good." Some limit this regard to the good or 
Christian men. To others "there is no form or 
comeliness in him." " They do not like his perfect 
life in contrast with their own." 

One gives this full answer to the question : " It 
depends upon the man. The more pervading and 



112 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

deep-seated the element of honesty is in the man, 
the more affinity he will feel between himself and 
the character of Jesus Christ. If a man orders his 
life in accordance with * No. i/ instead of the Golden 
Rule, the character of Christ, so far as it affects 
him at all, will be a reproach to him. There was 
not an attribute of Jesus Christ that did not re- 
buke self-seeking, meanness, hypocrisy, dishonesty. 
Men who are avaricious, men who love money for 
money's sake, men who love the chief seat in the 
synagogue, cannot find the person of Christ at- 
tractive, whatever they may outwardly profess on 
the subject.'* 

Still others believe that Christ would be attract- 
ive to men if they really knew him, and he was 
properly presented from the pulpit. Men **know 
nothing about him except what they are taught to 
believe." *'Men are so ignorant of what Christ 
is or what it is to be Christlike. Christian teach- 
ing, until within a short time, has been an emotional 
act rather than an appeal to the common sense. 
Any one whose susceptibilities were touched was 
received by the church with open arms. A man 
may resolve to be a Christian in an instant, but 
years of patient, enduring discipline of self must be 
persisted in before he can attain even a trifle of 
self-control and self-renunciation. Love of Christ 
may begin quickly in the heart, but only after 
years of toilsome study can the beauty of his life 
shine forth." 



THE MANLINESS OF CHRIST II3 

Several speak especially of the manliness of 
Christ as a needed condition of attracting men. 
** Yes, when he is preached as a full-rounded man 
of strength and character, but yet tender and lov- 
ing and humble. He is too often made to be a 
weak man by pulpit and painter, too much of the 
Isaiah Christ. Men love strength and courage and 
fortitude, and I believe that Christ so lived this life 
at all times.*' However, another pushes back the 
failure to attract men to the Bible itself, and says 
that, '*as presented in the Bible, he is essentially 
effeminate.'' 

Among other suggestive remarks made, are that 
he is attractive ''as a man," but *'they think he 
was almost too good to be real"; ''too impossi- 
ble." "Not all his teachings are practical. He 
merely preached sentiment and had a one-sided 
religion." "Jesus lived nineteen hundred years ago 
and things have changed so materially since then 
that to-day we can admire only his mission." " It 
should be so, but there are so few Christians who 
are living like Christ. Jesus would be more attract- 
ive to men if his followers were more like him." 

Looking at these answers as a whole, it may be 

said that there are four phases of Christ's life that 

are attractive to men when properly presented. 

The first is the human as the counterpart to the 

divine Christ.. It is well to emphasize for men with 

their struggles that Christ was at times hungry 

and thirsty, needed sleep and was often weary; 
H 



114 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

that he partook of flesh and blood, and was a 
fellow-sufferer on earth ; that he was beset with 
temptation, not only in the wilderness, but through 
his life, and that from the desert to Golgotha, be- 
tween baptism and baptism, there was a conflict 
with Satan ; that there were moments of perplex- 
ity and deep agonizing and strong crying. A man 
ought to come into contact with that Christ who 
grew as he grows, grew in stature, wisdom, and 
grace ; who learned obedience by the things that 
he suffered ; who was made perfect through suffer- 
ings ; who trusted and prayed as a real, dependent, 
subordinate, human being must. 

The second phase is the personal as opposed to 
the theological Christ. There are forensic rela- 
tionships with God no doubt, but men want reality. 
Christ cannot be a means to some end beyond him- 
self and be attractive to men. Atonement, justifi- 
cation, regeneration — there are two ways of defin- 
ing them. Better let the legal transactions be held 
in abeyance, while the personal relationships of 
Christ to the believer are made prominent. He it 
was who by a tangible vicarious sacrifice came 
into the fever-smitten world and took the dread 
disease of sin upon himself ; he it was who made 
himself our friend, bound us to him, and vouched 
for our future to the Father ; he it was who made 
us admirers and followers of him with a newly be- 
gotten impulse. That is all. It isn't hard to 
understand, but it helps a man. 



THE MANLINESS OF CHRIST I15 

Thirdly, there is the modern Christ versus the 
ancient Christ. A missionary once said — he is a 
returned missionary now: ** The Japanese cannot 
accept our historical Christ ; we must give them 
the Christ spirit — the essential Christ — and they 
will in this way come unto the light and truth/' 
Now men need the historical Christ, but they 
want also, not the present ideal of Christ alone, 
but Christ himself. We have a twofold process 
in transmitting Christ's teachings into the language 
of to-day: we must first put ourselves back into 
the first century to understand the times of Jesus 
and to see what he taught ; and, second, we must 
bring back the principles thus discovered and apply 
them to the present day. This must theoretically 
always be done. But practically, day by day, a 
man has but to say, ** Christ sees me ; knows me. 
What does he want me to do ? " 

Then, perhaps more than all else, the men of to- 
day want the masculine Christ as opposed to the 
feminine. There were two ancient ideas of Christ's 
physical appearance, one that he was a leper, smit- 
ten and afflicted of God, the other that he was the 
perfect type of physical manhood. The first idea 
passed away, but the second became so warped 
that in almost all art that to-day is admired, Christ 
is presented as a most effeminate man. The ideal 
is esthetic rather than practical. Christ is pictured 
with long hair parted in the center, with light brown 
beard, large dreamy eyes, and an expression of 



Il6 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

meekness and resignation. Perhaps this was the 
natural tendency of those centuries when the great 
problem was how to regard Christ as the Son of 
God ; although even Protestantism, while it did 
away with the worship of Mary, kept Mary's 
qualities in the Son. 

To-day, many causes seem to avail in holding this 
warped conception of the nature of Christ. It is 
not so uncommon, even at the present time, to hear 
the contrast made between God and Christ, mak- 
ing God the embodiment of justice and Christ of 
love, in order to justify a theory of the atonement. 
Whatever the reasons are, the popular opinion thus 
characterizes Jesus. It is somewhat startling, but 
after all only a unique example of a popular im- 
pression, that makes Rev. Phoebe H. Hanaford, a 
Universalist pastor, write in the Independent of May 
7, 1891 : *^ The church has long perceived that the 
tender-hearted pastor best represented the good 
Shepherd, who 'carried the Iambs in his bosom.' 
Not all men can thus present the Lord. But I 
think it cannot be denied, that all women, by their 
very womanliness, when they are called to the 
ministry, thus represent the great Teacher.'' 

But look at Christ from the critical point of view 
of masculinity, and what is found ? Did he have 
emotions ? Yes, but they were united with a strong 
intellectuality. He was not suggestible at all, but 
was himself the strong master of the minds of 
others. He was affectionate, but with an inde- 



THE MANLINESS OF CHRIST II7 

pendence and high moral regard that could make 
him rebuke his best earthly friend. No one could 
call him a conservative ; and yet he united his 
religion to the past of Judaism by the law of 
spiritual succession. He was dependent upon no 
one, except his Father. He was artistic, for no one 
knew the charms of nature better than he ; but he 
was rugged in thought and simple in speech. 

It is not possible to examine each part of his 
manly nature, but it is well to note especially the 
marks of his intellect and will-power. To be pure 
and to be insignificant in mental ability gives one 
little power over others. The world has seen in 
Christ morality triumphant under the skill of in- 
tellect. Mind is the ballast of godliness. Now 
Jesus had power to think as well as power to save. 
His intellectual power makes up a part of the reve- 
lation of God. Nor was it difficult for him to think 
great thoughts or build mighty plans which show 
the sanity of his mind by their persistency for 
twenty centuries. He was also a practical man of 
affairs. His plan was not complicated, but it car- 
ried within it success. For the time being, it was 
deprecated, but its wisdom is revealed by the fact 
that it is moving the world to-day. So keen- 
sighted was he, that he foretold the particular dif- 
ficulties his disciples would meet down through the 
progress of the centuries. 

Here and there some one has written a paragraph 
or more, appealing for a proper recognition of the 



Il8 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

manly Christ of sagacity and authority. Francis 
Greenwood Peabody, for example, in 'Mesus Christ 
and the Social Question/' writes : ** The traditions 
of the church ascribe to Jesus almost every other 
virtue than that of sagacity. He is the type of 
submission and resignation. His features, as por- 
trayed by Christian art, represent, almost invaria- 
bly, a feminine, spiritual, patient personality, not 
one that is virile, commanding, and strong. He 
has become the ideal of the monastic and ascetic 
character, and in many minds would have no con- 
sideration as a wise guide in practical affairs. A 
most careful study of the teaching of Jesus leads 
to quite an opposite impression. He was indeed a 
man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, but he 
was none the less truly a man of wisdom and ac- 
quainted with human nature. His sanity of judg- 
ment is as extraordinary as his depth of sympathy. 
. . . Christian art and reverence, in remembering 
the prophecy fulfilled in him, ' In all their affliction 
he was afflicted,' has forgotten that other hope of 
a just and discriminating guide, which was equally 
fulfilled in him : ' The government shall be upon 
his shoulder : and his name shall be called Wonder- 
ful, Counsellor'; *and the Spirit of the Lord shall 
rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understand- 
ing.' The picture of Jesus which Christian art has 
yet to paint is that of the masculine Christ, a per- 
sonality who teaches with authority, and whose 
horizon gives him comprehensiveness of view. 



?j 



THE MANLINESS OF CHRIST II9 

Christ had splendid self-control. See him as he 
conquered out there in the wilderness physical de- 
mands for the sake of the interests of the kingdom ; 
as he restrained his eagerness and worked on in 
obscurity for thirty years ; as he refused kingship, 
when he was de jure king ; as he never spoke un- 
advisedly, although the human tongue is a most 
unruly member ; as he spoke his convictions even 
when threatened by death. 

He had moral courage. He would not compro- 
mise with Nicodemus, or whitewash the lives of 
the Pharisees, or be fearful in driving out the 
money-changers by the threat of the lash. He 
was unmindful of his reputation, and never accom- 
modated his teaching to suit the times or the au- 
dience. He was as ready to set his face steadfastly 
to go to Jerusalem as if he were going to an en- 
thronement of earthly glory. He was a patriot ; 
but a patriot who loved his country better than 
his own life, and was willing to die for his country 
even when he himself could not live in his earthly 
life to share in the final victory. 

This fine category of manly qualities does not 
signify that Christ lacked the gentler graces. Speer 
quotes from Miss Mulock in *Mohn Halifax, Gentle- 
man," who speaks of tenderness as *'that rare 
thing — a quality different from kindliness, affec- 
tionateness, or benevolence ; a quality which can 
only exist in its perfection in strong, deep, unde- 
monstrative natures, and therefore in its perfection 



120 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION 

seldomer found in women than in men." Speer 
goes on to show that Jesus revealed that tender- 
ness in his quick thought for others, in his love for 
little children, in his kindly attitude toward the 
Samaritans, in his sympathy with widows, in his 
sympathy with the lonely, in his care for the poor, 
in his passion for healing the sick and the wretched, 
in his remembrance of his mother in his last agony. 
If, therefore, Jesus had the feminine graces, as 
he certainly did have, they were united with the 
strong, deep qualities of a manly nature. If he 
was the ''apotheosis of the feminine ideal,'' he 
was also the apotheosis of the masculine ideal. He 
was a hero, and men admire the hero. No wonder 
that Wendell Phillips made this reply to a group of 
men in Boston who told him that Jesus was amia- 
ble, but not strong: ''Not strong! Test the 
strength of Jesus by the strength of the men 
whom he has mastered ; titans like Cromwell, for 
example, or Augustine, or Martin Luther ! *' Test 
Jesus Christ by the best standards of manhood 
practised by the noblest men, and taught by the 
wisest leaders of thought, and Jesus will be found 
the supremely manly man. 



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